All, OpenOffice.org joins with the other signatories to protest the patent policy adopted by OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, the international consortium responsible for e-business standards.
The call to action, issued by noted open-source advocate and lawyer Lawrence Rosen and signed by so far every key open source luminary, protests the adoption by OASIS of a patent policy that permits, in Rosen's words, "standards to be based upon so-called 'reasonable and non-discriminatory' patent license terms--terms which invariably and unreasonably discriminate against open source and free software to the point of prohibiting them entirely. It would lead to the adoption of standards that cannot be implemented in open source and free software, that cannot be distributed under our licenses." [1] We agree that, again in Rosen's words, "The OASIS patent policy will encourage large patent holders to negotiate private arrangements among themselves, locking out all free software and open source developers." How does this patent policy affect OpenOffice.org? As an open-source project, we are implicitly affected. But our file format, OpenDocument, is not, though it is standardized by a committee associated with OASIS. As David Wheeler has pointed out, the relevant "committee ground rules specifically require a royalty-free license, avoiding this issue entirely. This is clearly stated in their IPR statement at: <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php>" To emphasize the point, "OpenDocument is NOT affected" by this patent issue. [2] Signed, The OpenOffice.org Community Council OpenOffice.org --- [1] <http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:9543:eipghffcblnbhjiggalm > [2] <http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:9544:flekopolmmghboadgcid > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
