Re: Seeking Clarification of Patent Licensing Commitments for BONDI APIs [was: Re: Early comparison of Nokia/BONDI APIs]

Hi Art, Frederick and Dom, 

On Friday 31 July 2009, Arthur Barstow wrote:
> David,
> 
> On Jul 30, 2009, at 4:14 PM, ext David Rogers wrote:
> 
> > BONDI has previously been submitted to both the WebApps group and this
> > group. When the contribution was made here, I don't believe either
> > Nokia, OMTP or any other company were members of the working group  
> > - it
> > didn't exist. I clearly understand the point you are driving at -
> > however the DAP group is still being formed and I think perhaps your
> > concerns are overstated. We have an existing legal framework which is
> > working - the Turin rules. Please can you clearly outline your  
> > concerns?
> 
> The WebApps WG isn't a concern here because, as far as I know, 100%  
> of the BONDI participants are official members of WebApps, thus the  
> Turin Rules are not relevant (for all practical purposes) for this WG.

I think the only exception so far is Paddy Byers from Applix. BTW, he is 
also in the Web Applications WG. 
> 
> However, in the case of DAP, it appears that, at least at the moment,  
> the rate of overlap is less. Given this, for transparency reasons, I  
> again ask for a list of contributors to the inputs submitted to DAP.

Who else is in DAP from OMTP, who is not from a W3C Member and not in 
the OMTP BONDI subcommittee? But I would really like to move this  
discussion about names into the member only space. 
> 
> Rigo, Stefan - would you please clarify: what, if any, patent  
> commitments a Turin Rule signer has if they contributed to a BONDI  
> API but do not join the DAP WG. In particular, will all contributions  
> from such members be bound to the W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing  
> Requirements [2] if their contribution is included a Recommendation?

If the Turin Rules were followed for the contributions of OMTP to DAP I 
would not see an issue as all contributions from OMTP to DAP would be 
licensed under W3C RF terms. But there is a remaining caveat: Those OMTP 
members that are not W3C Members and do not participate in the W3C WG 
would only commit RF on OMTP contributions and not on the rest of the 
Specification. So a situation would be still preferred where all 
contributors are W3C Members participating in the DAP WG, but from the 
standpoint of evaluating contributions from OMTP, the Turin rules put 
us rather on the safer side of things.

Art, thanks for being vigilant. If you have any further question or if 
my explanations are not sufficient, please don't hesitate to ask or 
comment.

Best, 

Rigo