On Apr 13, 2008, at 1:04 AM, Andrew C. Oliver wrote:
> As the guy who sits on the Advisory Committee, I think it's
important
> to point out that I had no input on the blog post in question, I was
> not even aware that it was being written until after it was
published,
> and I doubt very much I could exert any kind of editorial influence
> over the assiduously impartial fine folks at OSS Watch. I point this
> out to provide some kind of balance to Andy's focus on it.
Nick used it as a source, I noted that it wasn't a neutral source
and should not be mentioned as authoritative and that it should be
treated as probably biased by its own admission (like when CNN
covers Time-Warner). I DO find it coincidental and the article
very one sided.
Andy,
to be honest, I find very hard to have a discussion with someone who
doesn't want to listen and keeps ignoring my contributions. Pardon me
for taking it personally when you not only ignore what I'm saying,
but keep on posting FUD about us trying to inject patent trojan
horses, and now implying that we are bribing a white knight (God, I
wish I had so much influence on highly respectable organizations like
OSSWatch). I know you have all the right intentions to ensure that
POI is and remains OSS, but I would appreciate at least a
collaborative attitude in analyzing the issues in front of us. The
moment you stop snickering comments and random FUD bits is the moment
we can resume a conversation.
> As do many other organisations, I'm sure. Do we treat them all
with blanket -1s?
No I treat the contributions of any organization which holds
patents and does not choose to ensure they are properly licensed
such that they can be legally distributed in an open source
compatible manner regardless of whether they are through a third
party or not with a blanket -1. Once the legal problem is
resolved, I will change that to a +1 and change :-)
> I think you're not helping your case here by ascribing secret
> handshakes and ulterior motives. As an advisory service set up to
> provide information about open source (and with a track record of
> discussing open standards), it seems quite logical that some
> discussion of the Microsoft OOXML should occur, and that it should
> include mention of the POI effort. What's so mysterious about that?
To be clear, I've never heard of OSSWatch until Nick brought it
up. And this is getting sidetracked:
Why can't Microsoft just submit a CLA-C for the work they wish to
contribute via source sense and we be done with this?
I'll give it a last shot then call it a day unless you decide for a
change to discuss my arguments, stop sidetracking the real questions
and discuss the potential issues in the right places. First of all,
let me state loud and clear that I'm approaching this issue from a
Sourcesense (and ASF) angle, with no intention of representing
Microsoft at all: this means I won't be answering your question on
Microsoft filing a C-CLA, but I will show you why that's not the
problem. For all I know, the document could be signed by SB and in
the fax machine by now. Or not. The core issue is that, really, it
doesn't matter. Bear with me while I try (again) to tell you why is
that, and let me draw a simple line in the sand, first.
As all things legal with software, we are faced with two potential
issues here: one is copyright (that is "who wrote that?"), and the
other is patents (as in "is the copyright holder authorized to write
that code?"). Let's address the two separately, please.
From a copyright perspective let's assume, for the sake of
discussion, that I *am* right when I'm saying that a large chunk of
the actual POI contribution is (c) Sourcesense, with possibly some
bits (c) of other POI committers, and that's it from a copyright
perspective. Let's also hypothetically assume Microsoft itself didn't
produce any kind of copyrighted contribution, either directly (via
Microsoft employees) or indirectly (via WFH agreements and the like):
if you assume that's the case, do you agree that a CLA-C from MS
wouldn't change a single thing? Actually, wouldn't be actually
something inherently false, since in that case MS wouldn't be
providing any copyrighted stuff at all? If you're with me so far, the
consequence of all this is that a CLA-C from a non-copyright holder
is, at a very least, redundant. Before you ask, yes, even section 3
(Grant of Patent License) of a CLA-C would be redundant, as that's
not a blanket patent license, but it's tied to contributions-related
patents. That is, no actual contributions, no patent license grant.
You are of course entitled to your opinion when you say that the
specific Sourcesense/Microsoft agreement has to mean that Microsoft
is the actual copyright holder. I'm afraid, however, that yours is
and will remain an opinion, and I hope you will agree with me when I
say that there are a number of ways to ensure that parties can
collaborate with no direct influences on copyright. Now, the ASF is
funded on trusting the official declarations of contributors: the
moment we contribute stuff under the Sourcesense C-CLA (not to
mention people working outside their work remit, being covered by the
I-CLA), you have to trust that we are entitled to contribute that
code, implicitly stating that we have all the necessary rights to do so.
I don't see any practical way to challenge that without undermining
the very foundation of the ASF and of Open Source contributions in
general, as this would actually mean that everyone should be required
to file not only a CLA-C, but also any accompanying paperwork that
actually provides evidence that he's actually telling the truth,
which is unpractical at a very least, and stupid at best (but hey,
feel free to set an example and send all your past contracts which
resulted into POI contributions so that we can actually scrutinize if
you were entitled to contribute that code and not working under a WFH
scenario). I don't see any use in discussing this specific angle any
further, unless you have evidence that we are actually lying to the
ASF and our contributions are actually someone else's copyright.
On to the patent side. Here the risk we might be facing is having a
patent holder claim a patent infringement for implementing a patented
technology. This risk won't go away with a CLA-C, as stated above,
given that Microsoft hasn't been contributing anything from a
copyright perspective. Also, OOXML is a bit of a specific beast in
that it's not only a Microsoft technology, but also an ECMA and ISO
standard, but let's keep that aside for a moment. What we have here
is the OSP, that is a covenant that has been already deemed
sufficient by the ASF when the POI PMC specifically asked if OSP
terms were fine: this is enough to me to clear any issue from a
[EMAIL PROTECTED] perspective. If you have any gripes with that, you are more
than welcome to challenge and change the ASF position, but this
mailing list is not the right place for that: I would suggest you
send a note to legal-discuss and take it from there. In the meantime,
I believe your patent-related objections, as per your copyright-
related opposition don't have any actual ground.
I hope this helps,
--
Gianugo Rabellino
Sourcesense - making sense of Open Source: http://www.sourcesense.com
Blogging at http://boldlyopen.com/
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