Re: PaySwarm is controlled by this group (was: Re: web-payments.org vs. payswarm.com)

David, et.al, No complaint or suspicion at all is implied. On the contrary,
the motivation is to protect the outstanding work that the DigitalBazaar
team has undertaken and contributed.

I shared the example of an explicit "transfer of authority" just as an
option that my own firm has proactively put in place to formalize the shift
of the legal center of gravity on a project to another entity, even though
my firm put in all the up-front effort, and even though my firm remains the
de facto developer center of gravity. It's a free/libre/open variant of the
"Build-Operate-Transfer" process from the physical construction world.

Shortly the Open Source Initiative Working Group on Management Education
will be adding various business rationales and options for formally
"handing over" projects from one entity to another in the forthcoming OSI
"Management Education Syllabus on the Methods, Processes, Resourcing and
Governance of Free/Libre/Open Works - Version 2".
http://osi.xwiki.com/bin/view/Projects/Open+Source+Initiative+Working+Groups
We're in the middle of this presently. Here's Version 1 of the syllabus
initially prepared for a Fortune 500 client, dual-licensed CC-by-sa and
GNU-fdl, but not yet adapted and itself "handed over" to the OSI:
http://www.projectmanagementhotel.com/projects/course-free-libre-open/wiki

...That's to say, this management education syllabus is yet another example
of something presently undergoing a formalized "transfer of authority".
This particular arrangement involves my firm legally granting "joint
independent copyright" title over the syllabus itself and of any of the
texts in it that I wrote, the OSI.

The real utility of an explicit transfer of authority is not in the here
and now, but in the realm of all future possibilities. In general, the good
faith of people in the present is no protection from potential lack of good
faith amongst other "persons" (incl various entities besides flesh&blood
people) in the future who might come into (or believe they have come into;
or purport to have come into) possession of title to certain exclusive
copyrights and computational idea monopolies (aka "software patents"). The
monster flagship case is the copyright-based Caldera-to-SCO debacle which
"successfully" wasted enormous amounts of money and time of the Linux
community, and delayed the uptake of free/libre/open models generally in
many organizations for a decade through FUD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldera_OpenLinux
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20080803065719599

Payswarm as a reference implementation of a potential W3C standard has
great potential for global deployment. In the post-SCO world, everyone who
wants Payswarm to succeed would want to protect the copyright title and any
patents from any potentially scenarios in the future in which DigitalBazaar
and/or Payswarm become the victims of some sort of hijacking. Any company
can potentially be taken over by a copyright/patent troll in later years,
just as any government can undergo democratic or hostile regime change.
Same legal entity, totally different crop of people.  A "joint independent
copyright" title assignment to a wider community entity is one way to
protect copyright. And consignment of computational idea monopolies (aka
"software patents") to something like the Open Invention Network
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ achieves a similar objective.

Let me extend an invitation to anyone who would like to collaborate in
advancing the substance of the OSI "Management Education Syllabus on the
Methods, Processes, Resourcing and Governance of Free/Libre/Open Works -
Version 2", or participate in that OSI Working Group, to please contact me
off-list.

Joseph Potvin
*Chair, OSI Working Group on Management Education About Free/Libre/Open
Methods, Processes and Governance*
Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
jpotvin@opman.ca
Mobile: 819-593-5983
LinkedIn (Google short URL): http://goo.gl/Ssp56

On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 1:37 AM, David I. Lehn <dil@lehn.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 9:41 PM, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:
> > RE: "control of those specs was handed over to this Community Group some
> > time ago"
> >
> > Is the "handed over" part explicit and documented?
> >
> > How I've handled the transfer of works developed for sharing by my firm
> > (call it XYZ) to an autonomous free/libre/open future under a group of
> > non-profits (call them UVW) was with a signed document entitled
> "Transfer of
> > Project Authority".  It included the following text:
> > ...
> > Before any re-use, this text should be reviewed and adapted by your own
> > legal counsel, taking into account your circumstances. I am not a lawyer.
> > ...
>
> What does this accomplish?  Are the W3C policies, processes, and using
> the CLA not sufficient?
>
> Is there a belief that we at Digital Bazaar have some evil intentions
> here that require more legalese?  If anyone believes we are not acting
> in good faith, please let us know and we'll do our best to address the
> concerns.  Is that the case with this issue?  I have to wonder due to
> the overwhelming enthusiasm to switch from the "PaySwarm" naming.  We
> have contributed many thousands of hours of effort into advancing
> payments related community specs and open projects including RDFa,
> JSON-LD, Forge, PaySwarm, and more.  We are committed to working under
> the open process and licensing advocated by organizations like the W3C
> and IETF because they provide excellent legal, procedural, technical,
> and community frameworks for developing open standards.  Do we have
> commercial goals related to this technology?  Of course.  I imagine so
> do many of the companies and organizations of the participants in this
> group.  That is exactly why we are using open W3C processes to protect
> everyone.  The hope is this lets us all collaborate to develop great
> technology and worldwide standards.  These standards will have to be
> named something at some point.  When we started the standardization we
> thought the project name "PaySwarm" sounded rather catchy.  If the
> community decides it sounds too much like a Digital Bazaar controlled
> brand, that's fine.  But names like WPML and WPTP just don't sound as
> fun!
>
> -dave
>



-- 
Joseph Potvin
Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
http://www.projectmanagementhotel.com/projects/opman-portfolio
jpotvin@opman.ca
Mobile: 819-593-5983
LinkedIn (Google short URL): http://goo.gl/Ssp56