Patent Policy issues...

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:02:12 +0100, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com>  
wrote:
(in another thread - http://www.w3.org/mid/4F55FCC4.3090601@nokia.com ff)

> So among the problems I see are:

> PAGs suck (time, resources, joy from the WG, etc.);

Yes... but specs that can't be implemented without worrying about patents  
and finding out who you are going to have to pay how much suck too.

> the PP takes too many resources to implement for me as an AC rep and our  
> IP department;

I added a product to tracker on AC/member workload - I think there are  
other relevant issues here.

> the totality of the PP for WGs plus the CG's two patent policies are at  
> least one patent policy too many.

Raised ISSUE-4 on this.

> Proposed solution #1 -> drop the PP for WGs and drop the CG patent  
> policies and move to a lightweight model like the IETF's patent policy  
> model

This would remove the RF licensing. While it would reduce the workload, it  
would also reduce the value we get from W3C. I suspect the trade-off is  
not worth it for a lot of members, and personally don't think it would be  
an improvement (much as I too hate PAGs and am only writing this as a way  
to procrastinate doing some work for one...).

> Proposed solution #2 -> drop the PP for WGs and move WGs to use the CG  
> patent policies

If we don't have agreement to get to "finished", that still causes  
problems... the CG process has some benefits, but also some drawbacks.

An alternative proposal is to re-open the PP itself. The benefits are an  
opportunity to make it better, the drawbacks include probably not having  
consensus on what "better" *means*, which implies a lot of work finding  
out and a risk that what we get might not actually be better...

cheers

-- 
Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2012 12:17:05 UTC