On Jul 17, 2005, at 4:16 AM, Enrique Rodriguez wrote:
1) You bring up a very good point that the OSGi Member Agreement differs in key ways from the Apache CLA. To your original question "Will all of the OSGi members be signing that agreement, or at least those with IP claims on the code/specifications?" the answer is that none of the OSGi members have IP claims on the code or specifications, therefore we do not expect to need CLAs from any "significant contributors." Although it is allowed by the OSGi charter (and the FAQ on the website states members can even charge royalties!), in practice it is not done, since the other members would balk.
I do not understand that statement. Are you saying that nobody other than an OSGi employee contributed copyrightable material or patentable inventions to the final specification? Or are you saying that there is some other agreement that the members have signed that clears such issues for this specification? Or for R4?
2) Everyone on this thread is reviewing statements on the website and the current specification related to version R3. Our intention is to implement R4, which will be released shortly. The Eclipse foundation went through this same debate, as they ship an open-source OSGi R3 runtime and, contrary to popular belief, they are not an OSGi member, the Eclipse Foundation having officially spun off from IBM. The R3 specification "license" was meant to be very liberal, to allow widespread adoption, but, as you note, it ended up not saying enough, ie not explicitly stating your right to license this technology. Largely due to Eclipse pressure, the next specification version, R4, will be be clarifying the OSGi Alliance's position on this matter (so the specification is widely adopted) and, in fact, the specification sources will be released under the Eclipse Public License.
That is excellent news. Would it be possible to make a development version of that specification (with its EPL terms) available for download relatively soon? ....Roy
