Re: Patent Policy issues...

After a bit of noodling with Art, he motivated the following thoughts.

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:16:35 +0100, Charles McCathieNevile  
<chaals@opera.com> wrote:

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

Under the current WG policy, members participating are bound to make a  
commitment to the final product. Under the CG policy, the commitment only  
exends to contributions from the member, with there being a seperate step  
allowing them to commit to the finished spec. A plus for this is that it  
could allow a member who has useful contributions to be in the group,  
without having to hand over IP they don't want to talk about.

My concern (because I think getting as much RF commitment as possible is a  
really really important goal) is that it is fairly easy to make sure the  
spec is not finished, and easier to watch quietly while someone else  
includes material that a troll knows they cover with IP, then walk away  
leaving the spec effectively unimplementable for anyone who doesn't  
license the IP - and without anyone even knowing, since there isn't the  
requirement to identify or exclude anything.

There are nice features about the CG appraoch, like a conditional license  
to implement when the spec is in development (which is important is you  
want to get tests developed and passed). I think this should be explored  
further...

But it depends on what the W3C membership at large want to do, and without  
a lot of motivation they might just let sleeping dogs lie...

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 Monday, 12 March 2012 17:24:56 UTC