Re: Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?
Russell McOrmond wrote: [...] deal with some of the worst cases we are currently dealing with. Care to provide some SPECIFIC example(s) involving IBM? You've mentioned before IETF and OASIS. Well, IETF with its RAND patent licensing policy aside for a moment (http://tinyurl.com/yshn3 and see also http://www.ietf.org/IESG/Section10.txt), I've found the following: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrp/ibm_ipr_statement.shtml [...] IBM will, upon written request, provide a nonexclusive, royalty free patent license, with other reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions, for those patents issued to IBM which contain claims essential, in IBM's judgment, to implementations of the Specification and for which IBM is able to provide patent licenses (including patents issuing on the published patent applications disclosed above), for implementing the Specification. This patent license is available to all entities. If a party requesting a patent license also has claims essential to the implementation of the Specification (hereafter Requestor Claims), IBM will grant this patent license only if the recipient, in return, will grant IBM a reciprocal license, with substantially identical terms and conditions, under the Requestor's Claims. If a party has a license with respect to IBM Essential Claims and acquires, by any means, one or more Requestor Claims and refuses to grant IBM a reciprocal license (with substantially identical terms and conditions) under such Requestor Claims, IBM may suspend or revoke the license IBM granted to such party. Lawrence E. Rosen wrote: in the other thread [...] industry standard software. I would welcome IBM's commitment to THAT goal as well. This can perhaps be accomplished if IBM and other companies actively support open-source-friendly patent policies for standards organizations similar to that adopted by W3C, an effort that IBM has conspicuously refused to make outside of W3C. Well, here's an example that has really nothing to do with W3C. http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/754/meeting-minutes/02-04-18.html [...] On the patent Cowlishaw: - It's normal business practice. - Benefit: Could make the encoding public early on. - Problem: Does it stop necessary support? - RAND licensing it typical, but because it's an encoding, it's more valuable that it's used at all. Delp: This has to get through parent committees. Cowlishaw: At a minimum, do the base requirement for IEEE. Will look into royalty free licensing. This is about http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal (General Decimal Arithmetic) and IBM's US Patents 6,437,715/6,525,679 (equivalents in Europe and Japan aside for a moment), I guess. Now, here's the latest: http://google.com/groups?selm=clcm-20031117-0011%40plethora.net [...] IBM has already written the necessary formal letter to the IEEE stating that this will be Royalty Free for implementers of the standard (rather than RAND), though RAND is permitted by IEEE rules. regards, alexander. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Alexander Terekhov wrote: Russell McOrmond wrote: [...] Note: There are all these Halloween documents discussing the OSI battle-of-words with Microsoft, but I wonder why there is no similar discussion with IBM? Well, see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl.php http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ibmpl.php This doesn't constitute a discussion on the same scale. Both Microsoft and IBM have licensed relatively small parts of their software portfolio (patents and copyright) via Free/Libre and Open Source licensing. This minor amount of Open Source licensing of software does not deal with the problems these companies create for the Open Source movement. I will allow someone with a legal background to look at these licenses and question whether they constitute Open Source patent licenses considering they have field of use restrictions (Conflicts with OSD #3, #7, #8). I was not part of this mailing list when these licenses were evaluated. As I suggested in the earlier message I suspect that evaluations thus far have looked far more closely at copyright clauses than they have at patent clauses. http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indprop/comp/ibm.pdf IBM believes harmonisation should occur along lines which endorse the current practice and case law of the European Patent Office. We oppose either a more restrictive or a more liberal approach to patenting. I am glad you provided examples of the problem I was trying to alert people in this forum to. The current practice of the EPO has been to grant software patents on pure software (not software coincidentally part of an otherwise patentable manufacturing process - a different situation entirely) even though article 52 of the European Patent Convention specifically excluded programs for computers, mental rules, mathematical methods etc from patentability. In other words, this position from IBM was a clear statement in favor of legalizing software patents in Europe contrary to the existing EPC, part of the general extreme pro-software-patent lobbying position of IBM worldwide. You seem to be agreeing that the IBM position in policy discussions such as this has been in favor of software patents (treating software as itself a manufactured good to be treated similar to computer hardware). This position is in and of itself a position in opposition to Open Source. The Halloween documents describe the opposition that Microsoft has had against Open Source. I still do not see the information on the OpenSource.org website describing the opposition that IBM has had against Open Source. Without documenting and better understanding this opposition it will be unlikely that there will be a motivation for IBM to change. The branches of software creators which treat software as a manufactured good (Software Manufacturing) and Open Source can co-exist. This has has been the position of the OSI, but this co-existence is only possible if lobby groups like IBM stop pushing for policies which favor only software manufacturing at the exclusion of Open Source. When we discuss exclusive rights in the form of copyright (excluding interface copyright of course) we are talking about a form of software protection where many methodologies can and do co-exist. When we talk about software patents (or interface copyright) we talk about a form of protection that protects software manufacturing at the exclusion of Open Source and Free Software. To see my policy suggestions from last year, see: http://www.flora.ca/patent2003/ I wonder if IBM would support the suggestion that fair use (fair dealings in Canada) should be a defense against patent infringement claims and that use of royalty-free licensing offering users the right to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software (in other words, was Free/Libre and Open Source Software) would trigger this fair use exemption. While this is not an ideal solution like statutory exclusions of information process patents, it would deal with some of the worst cases we are currently dealing with. P.S. europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indprop/comp/eicta.pdf One company and organization at a time. I would first like to see members of OSI open more substantive conversations with IBM, and then worry about these other organizations opposed to Open Source at a later date. The BSA and CompTIA have also published considerable literature opposed to Open Source, but are not as visible as IBM in trying extract benefit from the movement at the same time. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: http://www.flora.ca/ Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than politicians should be bought. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?
I am starting to notice a growing number of people who claim that what makes software Open Source is what *copyright* license agreement it is licensed under. This is not in fact the case: a program qualifies as Open Source if the distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria as described in the Open Source Definition: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php In practical terms this means that any exclusive rights that exist on the work must be licensed according to this criteria. While all the licenses in the OSI approved license list deal with copyright issues, not all of them address other exclusive rights like patents at all. I suggest clarification in the definition on this issue, including possibly a reference to a document that describes the issue in more detail. PCT - Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks (and other Sui Generis Protections) I don't think Trademarks or other Sui Generis Protections are an issue for Open Source at this time. Requiring that someone rename the project if they make a modification does not go against any of the criteria that I can see. I don't know how database protections are going to affect collections of programs (distribution CDs, etc), but I can't think of a problem that isn't dealt with by #9. If I am wrong, please correct me -- are there discussion papers on various Sui Generis Protections already? Copyright is dealt with extensively on the site already, and is the core of the documentation. Patents do not seem to be dealt with generally, only specifically within certain license agreements that mention all PCT issues in the single license agreement. A great example of a license that deals with the patent issue is http://www.opensource.org/licenses/osl.php at 2) Grant of Patent License. Not all OSI approved license agreements mention patents at all, leaving a marketing loophole where someone can claim that software is Open Source because it uses an OSI approved license, and yet is not open source because it uses a patent license which is not OSI approved. Unsuspecting Open Source developers and users could then offer support for this software only to find out after the fact that someone else claims ownership (via patents) over their work. My reading of the OSD suggests that only an RF (royalty free) patent license with no Field of Use restrictions would qualify. The RF issue is clear from #1, and this came out clearly in the discussions with the W3C. What I don't see clearly stated is how #3,#6,#7,#8 all add up to a requirement that there be no field of use restrictions, something that wasn't clarified well during the W3C patent policy debates. Licensing, including for derivative works, must be automatic (that any recipient of the software receive the same patent license) in my reading of the OSD #7. This is one issue that many people incorrectly believe is a GNU GPL issue rather than an issue with all Open Source compatible patent licenses. (Example: see the misinformation in http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5125160.html ) Motivations: I have been trying to deal with this issue in the context of IBM and my work with Industry Canada on software patent issues http://www.flora.ca/patent2003/. We need to somehow encourage IBM to come clean on how they appear to be adopting Open Source via using Open Source qualifying copyright licenses while at the same time promoting unlimited patentability worldwide http://swpat.ffii.org/players/ibm/ and not fully adopting Open Source patent licenses (such as the W3C and now IETF and OASIS problems). Here is an example letter to the editor I have sent in: IBM Leads in Patent (arms) Race http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/2259 Note: There are all these Halloween documents discussing the OSI battle-of-words with Microsoft, but I wonder why there is no similar discussion with IBM? Microsoft may be fun to play with, but they are simply not the only organization that is committing actions that can harm the Open Source movement. I think IBM represents a considerably greater threat than Microsoft, and IBM may turn out to be easier to reach to turn them around. If we can turn IBM around we may be able to turn around the whole information process patents issue once and for all. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: http://www.flora.ca/ Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than politicians should be bought. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Open Source Definition : can it be made explicit about non-copyright issues?
Russell McOrmond wrote: [...] Note: There are all these Halloween documents discussing the OSI battle-of-words with Microsoft, but I wonder why there is no similar discussion with IBM? Well, see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl.php http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ibmpl.php and, perhaps, also http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indprop/comp/ibm.pdf [...] IBM has an open patent licensing policy under which we are prepared to licence our patents on a non-discriminatory world-wide basis. Moreover, IBM licences on a royalty-free basis the patents that are necessarily implemented by the use or sale of our open source contributions, a policy that has been endorsed by the Open Source Initiative. regards, alexander. P.S. europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indprop/comp/eicta.pdf -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
