[legal] [OpenID board] Draft OpenID Intellectual Property Rights PolicyforReview

Wed Sep 26 17:50:01 UTC 2007

I'd recommend legal as well since it will be easier to direct folks who are
*only* interested in the legal issues to that spot. It's a distinct crowd, I
think (unfortunately). 

Also, the announcement has already gone out to a number of places pointing
people at legal...

	-Gabe

> -----Original Message-----
> From: board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf
> Of David Recordon
> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 10:43 AM
> To: Drummond Reed
> Cc: board at openid.net; legal at openid.net; general at openid.net
> Subject: Re: [OpenID board] Draft OpenID Intellectual Property Rights
> PolicyforReview
> 
> I suggested legal at openid.net so that it will be easier to keep track
> of the conversation. :)
> 
> 
> On Sep 26, 2007, at 10:35 AM, Drummond Reed wrote:
> 
> > David,
> >
> > First I want to say to you, Bill Washburn, the other OpenID
> > Foundation board
> > members, and others in the community who worked with you on this:
> > nice job.
> > I know it's been a huge amount of work, but it's worth it in every
> > way.
> >
> > Second: I agree you needed to send this message to both legal and
> > general,
> > but it would be great if we could agree to use one list for the
> > feedback
> > discussion.
> >
> > How about general, since feedback is a topic for the whole
> > community? (I'm
> > cc'ing legal on this message just so they know to use general.)
> >
> > =Drummond
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: board-bounces at openid.net [mailto:board-bounces at openid.net]
> >> On Behalf
> >> Of David Recordon
> >> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:35 AM
> >> To: legal at openid.net
> >> Cc: general at openid.net
> >> Subject: [OpenID board] Draft OpenID Intellectual Property Rights
> >> Policy
> >> forReview
> >>
> >> Since the early summer we've been working to define an intellectual
> >> property rights policy and process for technical OpenID specification
> >> work moving forward.  The goal of this work is to truly allow the
> >> community to continue to live up to Brad Fitzpatrick's original
> >> "nobody should own this" statement.  As the community has grown this
> >> year to include participation of larger companies, the desire to make
> >> this statement a reality from a legal perspective has been quite
> >> strong.  To achieve this, a group of representatives from the OpenID
> >> Foundation, AOL, Microsoft, VeriSign, Sun, Symantec, and Yahoo!
> >> worked to help draft and review a policy and related documents basing
> >> the work upon similar policies from the IETF, OASIS, W3C, and Liberty
> >> Alliance.  Today we're asking for review of this work for thirty days
> >> so that before the end of the year we as a community can adopt the
> >> policy and release the OpenID Authentication 2.0 specification final
> >> version under it.
> >>
> >> As to the question of "What does this mean to me", there are a few
> >> answers:
> >>   - If you are using/implementing OpenID there is nothing that you
> >> need to do to be protected by this policy.  All future work will be
> >> covered by it and the policy includes provisions to retroactively
> >> apply the non-assertion covenant to OpenID Authentication 1.1, OpenID
> >> Simple Registration 1.0, and Yadis 1.0.
> >>   - If you have actively contributed to one of the OpenID
> >> specifications (especially if you have written text for 2.0) we will
> >> be contacting you proactively over the next month for feedback on the
> >> policy and asking you to agree to it.  This will thus allow us as a
> >> community to release the 2.0 specification this year under the
> >> policy.
> >>   - Once the policy is adopted, specification work will be broken up
> >> into "working groups" based upon a topic.  For example Authentication
> >> and Attribute Exchange will most likely become two working groups
> >> with each group having its own specs-<foo>@openid.net mailing list.
> >> This is to allow for IPR promises from the larger companies which may
> >> not wish to participate in every OpenID community effort.  Before
> >> posting to one of these working group lists for the first time, you
> >> will be required to agree to the policy.  This will ensure that all
> >> formal contributions to the final specifications are covered by the
> >> policy and the resulting spec does not have any known IPR
> >> encumbrances.
> >>
> >> As part of this effort, we've also drafted a rationale document to
> >> help explain some of the "design decisions" the group made.
> >> Generally I recommend you read that document (it is free from
> >> legalese) and it can be found at http://openid.net/ipr/
> >> OpenID_IPR_Rationale-Circulation_Draft_20070925.pdf.  The policy and
> >> process documents themselves can be found at http://openid.net/ipr/.
> >> (I apologize for the PDFs, we'll get these up in HTML format before
> >> they're final).  If you didn't see your question answered in this
> >> email, please do look at the rationale document as it hopefully will
> >> already be answered there.
> >>
> >> We've tried to keep the policy and process as simple as possible
> >> while still giving the needed legal protections and are looking for
> >> feedback around the process.  One thing to keep in mind is that the
> >> process is based on consensus (much like the IETF or ASF) and many of
> >> the clauses only apply in the case that consensus is impossible to
> >> reach (which is viewed as being quite rare).  There is also still
> >> some word-smithing which is needed, so anyplace it seems like we
> >> meant to say the "OpenID Foundation" instead of "OpenID", we probably
> >> meant to. :)
> >>
> >> We realize this is a lot to process, but have tried our best to
> >> represent the views of a wide range of companies with varying IPR
> >> positions as well as the values of this community.  We're certainly
> >> interested in feedback and questions, ideally within the next thirty
> >> days sent to legal at openid.net.  Differing from many discussions, even
> >> if all you have to say is "+1" that is valuable feedback so that we
> >> can know if we're on the right track.  Please also feel free to
> >> contact me off-list if there are any questions or concerns you have
> >> that you don't wish to discuss publicly though we certainly encourage
> >> this discussion to happen on the list.
> >>
> >> Thanks again to everyone who has been involved in this work!
> >>
> >> --David
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> board mailing list
> >> board at openid.net
> >> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board
> >
> >
> 
> 
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