This is great!
While many from the civil society were involved in helping shape a
progressive open standards in egov policy, and staving off the many
strong threats to it, Venky's contribution to this process was
singularly outstanding. I have seen few such committed personal efforts
in advocacy. He was single-mindedly focussed on 'not what we did' (the
bane of much civil society advocacy efforts) but on 'what happened', and
'what more could be done to make more happen'.
He not only studiously tracked every step and each movement in the
policy making process, at every point he did almost more than what is
humanly possible to contact all people who could be of use at the
particular moment, kept pursing them relentlessly, and saw to it that
the best impact possible of progressive actors was made. One can never
fully judge what would have happened if this or that had not been done,
but I do consider it very likely that we would not have got the policy
in this shape without his efforts. So special personal congratulations
to you , Venky. Also to all others who did so much work in this matter.
Not much good is happening in India's policy making spaces today, and
these few victories feel that much sweeter. Parminder
On Friday 12 November 2010 05:26 PM, Venkatesh Hariharan wrote:
The open standards policy has been finalized and it incorporates many
of the suggestions made by the FOSS community in India. In the
previous draft dated 25/11/2009, our major objection was to section
4.1.2 of the policy which said,
"4.1.2 The essential patent claims necessary to implement the
Identified Standard should preferably be
available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for
the life time of the standard.
However, if such Standards are not found feasible and in the wider
public interest, then RF on Fair,
Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or
Reasonable and Non
Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) could be considered."
Our comment on this section reads:
The usage of terms like “preferably” in a section titled, “Mandatory
Characteristics”
weakens the section and could even render it meaningless. Mandatory
characteristics should be laid
out clearly and unambiguously,
The term “essential patent claims,” is meaningless because a standard
cannot be implemented
partially. Therefore, the ENTIRE standard should be royalty-free and
not just the "essential" parts of it.
In other words, ALL patent claims necessary to implement the standard
should be royalty-free. Also,
RF on FRAND/RAND is self-contradictory. If a Standard is Royalty Free
(RF) then it cannot be RAND.
Therefore, the wording of this section should be changed to "ALL
patent claims necessary to
implement the Identified Standard should be available on a
Royalty-Free (no payment and no
restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard. However, if
such Standards are not found feasible
and in the wider public interest, then Fair, Reasonable and Non
Discriminatory terms and conditions
(FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions
(RAND) could be considered.”
As you can see from the extract below, the points mentioned above have
been incorporated In the recently finalized policy. This section now
reads:
4.1.2 The Patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard
shall be made available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of
the Standard.
Overall, I'd say this is a major victory for the Indian FOSS community
and more than three years of hard work have paid off. The file can be
downloaded from:
http://egovstandards.gov.in/approved-standthe suggestions
mards/egscontent.2010-11-12.9124322046/at_download/file
or from:
http://egovstandards.gov.in (click on the links on the top left hand
side).
Venky
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