When it comes to IP matters, OSLC workgroup participants (typically their employers) agree to two things today:
(1) that contributions to the community are made under a Creative Commons copyright license, and (2) to make an IP Covenant (a promise) not to file patent claims against implementations of an OSLC specification These things in combination allow for a free flowing specification authoring process and a tangible form of encouragement of OSLC spec implementations. One of our community members shared with me that his company is not accustomed to the IP Covenant legal approach and prefer instead to make a specific license grant to implementers of OSLC specifications. To address the concern, I worked with folks from that company and with my IBM colleague and IP attorney Dan McLoughlin to draft language that would allow workgroup participants to either (a) make the IP Covenant as has been our standard practice to date, or (b) provide a no-charge, royalty-free license grant covering any IP necessary to implement an OSLC specification. Dan's proposed license grant language is linked to below [1]. You'll note that the language and substance are largely the same as that of the Covenant. Now that we have a draft, I'd like to open it up to the community for comment. I'll take any feedback on the license grant language between now and the end of the year. Feel free to send me that feedback directly via e-mail. Barring any major issues, I'm proposing to summarize the feedback and add the final language as an option, alongside the Covenant, to the OSLC terms of use in the first week of January. The new option won't come into play for any current specs/covenant documents, however workgroup participants who are involved in future specs can decide to continue to make use of the IP Covenant or instead make use of the License Grant. One last thought - I'm not sure that either option is "better" or "preferred" -- that's really up to individual workgroup participants to decide in consultation with their legal experts and in context of their organization's practices. That said, both of these legal approaches/tools offer the kind of assurances intended to encourage OSLC spec implementations. I'm happy that we can introduce this option. Thanks...Scott [1] http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OslcLicenseGrantDRAFT Scott Bosworth | IBM Rational CTO Team | [email protected] | 919.486.2197 (w) | 919.244.3387(m) | 919.254.5271(f)
