Gary,
If I was involved with this group and was required to warrant something I placed into an Open Source project which I then had little control over how it would be used, I'd be pulling out too.
the issue of IP and standards is a tricky one. There are many standards bodies, the ones we know best are probably the W3C and the ISO.
Here is the issue. Due to our current IP laws, (particularly patents) almost every idea under the sun is essentially owned by someone. Obviously standards are based on existing ideas, and so in essence, to have a standard, you are using someone's IP. This is not a theoretical problem. Microsoft have been granted patents that would apply to cascading style sheets. So potentially any browser, or software that uses style sheets may infringe MS's patent. You can see perhaps why I think this is an important issue.
Now, if you as a company contribute IP to a standard, in effect you have the standards body over a barrel. In order for anyone to adopt the standard, they need to license your IP. Once a standard is in place, what is to stop you discriminating between different companies, essentially driving some if not all of your competitors out of the space in which the standard operates?
So, in order for a standard to work as it should (levelling the playing field for all players), this needs to be addressed.
Originally the W3C policy was that all IP had to be offered to anyone using the standard under a Reasonable and non discriminatory license (RAND). This caused an outcry. Suppose MS charged $200K to use CSS. This doesn;t discriminate, as all are charged the same. But whereas Apple or Opera might have no real trouble with that, what about open source projects like Mozilla? Or guys like us (westciv, developers or Style Master)? So the W3C policy now is, royalty free license. You don't lose your IP, you just can't charge for it if it is used in the context of the standard.
The issue of what happens if a company changes its mind is interesting, and differs between standards bodies. I won't bore people with the details here, except to say that the license is not enforceable. If I contribute IP to a w3c standard, I can withdraw that even after a standard is published, and the W3C has no way of enforcing the license (this is according to a patent attorney who spoke on this issue at a recent conference I attended)
The W3C does have a policy regarding what it will do in these circumstances, bu see here for details
http://www.w3.org/IPR/
Sol in essence, there has to be a trade off. You can't be allowed to use IP as a trojan horse to control standards and so a whole industry.
At the bottom of this is our really problematic use of Real Property concepts and laws as a basis for IP laws. They are a bad fit for many reasons. Which is not to say we should not have IP laws, but to say that they should be framed in rational ways, for general benefit. At present IP laws are essentially being written by large US companies for their own exclusive benefit. Then countries like australia stupidly adopt them via trojan horses like the recent so called free so called trade so called agreement between the US and Australia, which claim to "harmonize" IP laws between the US and Australia by *Australia adopting US laws in toto*.
Anyway, this is way off topic in some respects, but right on topic in others.
john
John Allsopp
:: westciv :: http://www.westciv.com/ software, courses, resources for a standards based web :: style master blog :: http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/ :: WebEssentials Sept 2004 Sydney Australia :: http://www.we04.com
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