Agreement Launch Talking Points
David Rudin
launch at http://wiki.openwebfoundation.org/Launch_Plan_Materials.
Edits/additions/etc. are welcome.
- David
Brett McDowell
On that page you asked "[Question - any thoughts on how to talk about members' employers?]"
One approach would be to change your question from "Who are the OWF members?" to "Who is behind OWF?" or "Who supports OWF?" then you can answer that question by mentioning both the "Members" (and that they are individuals) along with any facts currently available about who is putting the OWFa into effect. The second part is where you can mention the large companies.
FWIW,
Brett McDowell | http://info.brettmcdowell.com | http://KantaraInitiative.org
David Rudin
Brady Brim-DeForest
Brady Brim-DeForest
www.brimdeforest.com (the blog)
www.tubefilter.tv (the company)
Follow me: twitter.com/bradybd
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David Rudin
DeWitt Clinton
Tantek Celik
Lawrence Rosen
I don't like the word "Final" because it makes it sound like it is more than the 0.9 version. What's wrong with just "Specification Agreement"? I'm open to other ideas too. /Larry
From:
open-we...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-we...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of DeWitt Clinton
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:32 PM
To: open-we...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Open Web Board] Re: Agreement Launch Talking Points
I had the same question about "OWFa" - thanks for asking about that.
DeWitt Clinton
David Rudin
Tantek Celik
Open Web Foundation Specification Agreement
and if we must acronymize, then I propose OWFSA.
-t
David Rudin
DeWitt Clinton
The division of labor between open communities that support licensing, specification, and implementation makes perfect sense to me, and is core to the value proposition of the OWF (why reinvent licensing just because you want a new spec?), but is probably still not clear to most users. Might be worth adding an FAQ entry about that, with a concrete example of some standard that uses OWF for licensing, X for spec, and Y for reference implementation.
Lawrence Rosen
DeWitt wrote:
I.e., OWFa for specs, Apache for reference implementation, etc. I completely agree.
Then we're stuck with analyzing license compatibility. While I believe that OWFa 0.9 is compatible with the Apache 2.0 license, I'm getting a lot of pushback on that from within Apache. Please don't assume that Apache reference implementations of OWFa specs will be coming soon.
Because of this resistance within Apache, I'm reluctant to seek OSI approval at this time. So we can avoid license proliferation by not treating OWFa as another open source license, and Apache can avoid OWFa. What an unfortunate situation!
/Larry
DeWitt Clinton
Gabe Wachob
compatibility, I would think that would be somewhat (at least)
persuasive...
Would they rather have no licensing? Is there a licensing regime for
specs they prefer? Were they happy with the state of OAuth before
OWFa-like licensing was applied?
Are they balking at WRAP, which appears to be OWFa-licensed (from
Google and Microsoft, 2/3 of the contributors). [1]
Like DeWitt, I believe the time is now to raise these issues - the
OWFa proposal has been unchanged for enough time for review at this
point.
-Gabe
[1] http://groups.google.com/group/oauth-wrap-wg/files?hl=en
Gabe Wachob / gwa...@wachob.com \ http://beatslacker.com
Lawrence Rosen
DeWitt wrote:
Actually, I do make that assumption, as that's exactly the intention for a large number of communities (OWFa specs, Apache implementations). If there are challenges to that assumption then they should be raised now. I don't know the specifics or the merits of the concerns you allude to, so I'm afraid I can't comment further than that.
I assumed that too. In fact, I assumed that our goal was OWFa specs, *any* open source or proprietary implementations.
The objections from within ASF are not new. They were raised earlier on the OWF list by some of our members. I intend to share those comments again on the OWF Legal-Drafting list as soon as we set up. There is a reason why I insisted that the OWFa be released as the 0.9 version. Just as Yahoo! had a last minute opportunity to make small changes in the agreement before we went live, our entire community including ASF members will want to make (hopefully) small changes before we publish the 1.0 version of our license.
I believe that we can agree to such changes without significantly modifying the substantive terms of the OWFa, as part of a process that gives everyone a stake in the final product.
It is not just the open source community that is choking on a new license. I also have had conversations with a representative here from a software company that refuses to use OWFa for a W3C specification intended to be implemented on the open web.
Our work is just starting.
Eran Hammer-Lahav
There was nothing in Roy’s feedback to imply that his views go beyond just that, his personal views. I have great respect for Roy, but I object to the insinuation that his feedback amounts to an official objection from the ASF. In addition, making statement like “don't assume that Apache reference implementations of OWFa specs will be coming soon” is completely groundless and irresponsible. The OWF goes further than the W3C and IETF policies, both of which provide the vast majority of technologies used by ASF projects.
We are, and have always been open to feedback. Our dialog with the ASF existed from the very beginning, and I am unaware of any official outreach by the ASF on the agreement. While some ASF members have expressed concerns or requested changes, I took those to be forward looking and trying to go beyond the status quo of standards development. There is a clear line between the desire to improve things, and calling them unusable or incompatible.
We don’t need this thread to show up when someone search the web for information about the OWF agreement and the ASF.
EHL
Brett McDowell
Eran Hammer-Lahav
I don’t think this is necessary before going public with the agreement, but certainly something we should strive for in our relationship with the ASF as well as other organizations.
EHL
Lawrence Rosen
Brett McDowell wrote:
So, how about we go one step further and secure an official statement of support from ASF that would make this whole side-bar moot. Is anyone here in a position to approach them for such a statement?
I'm an ASF member and their legal counsel. Do you really want me
to ask again? I'm willing to do so. I don't speak for them, only with some
understanding of how difficult it is to overcome the objections of certain
members of the ASF board of directors. That comment I quoted came from an ASF
board member who will vote on issuing any such "official statement". Do
you want to raise things to that level?
Please remember that I agree with OWF's legal views of this. I don't think the proposed changes will make an important substantive difference nor would they necessarily be acceptable to our commercial friends. We have a political problem, not necessarily a legal one.
It is not a problem that should delay our announcement.
Eran Hammer-Lahav
It all depends on what questions we ask them.
If we asked for an official endorsement, yes, I agree that might cause problems. But I would simply ask what is the ASF’s position with regard to allowing technologies licensed under the OWF agreement, and how any potential object compares to technologies coming from the W3C or the IETF?
The OWF, while young, is an independent organization with its own rich membership and experiences. I don’t need the ASF, OSI, or any other body to make our work more legitimate. However, since we are in the business of empowering adoptions, we should ask questions that will help our users accomplish that in the widest form possible.
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Chris Messina
Foundation Agreement 0.9. I support this.
I would recommend striking the "v" in "v0.9" and just using 0.9. We do
the same thing with OAuth and OpenID. It's cleaner, and more
consistent.
Chris
On Nov 12, 2:35 pm, "Tantek Celik" <tan...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> I second Brady's concern and go further - I'd prefer we spell out OWF Agreement 1.0 (or whatever the version number is). One less jargon/acronym please. -t
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brady Brim-DeForest <brad...@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:20:24
> To: <open-we...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [Open Web Board] Re: Agreement Launch Talking Points
>
> David, this is great. Thanks for putting this together.
>
> It may be too late to raise this question, but are we locked on the OWFa
> moniker?
>
> --
> Follow me: twitter.com/bradybd
>
> This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private
>
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:27 AM, David Rudin <da...@rudin.us> wrote:
>
> > Thanks Brett. I like that approach. I'll update the wiki.
>
> > David
>
> > On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 4:25 AM, Brett McDowell <em...@brettmcdowell.com>wrote:
>
> >> Great start David.
>
> >> On that page you asked "[Question - any thoughts on how to talk about
> >> members' employers?]"
>
> >> One approach would be to change your question from "Who are the OWF
> >> members?" to "Who is behind OWF?" or "Who supports OWF?" then you can answer
> >> that question by mentioning both the "Members" (and that they are
> >> individuals) along with any facts currently available about who is putting
> >> the OWFa into effect. The second part is where you can mention the large
> >> companies.
>
> >> FWIW,
>
> >> Brett McDowell | http://info.brettmcdowell.com |
> >>http://KantaraInitiative.org
>
> >> On Nov 12, 2009, at 2:17 AM, David Rudin wrote:
>
> >> > I've taken a stab at putting together talking points for the agreement
Roy T. Fielding
> There was nothing in Roy’s feedback to imply that his views go beyond just that, his personal views. I have great respect for Roy, but I object to the insinuation that his feedback amounts to an official objection from the ASF. In addition, making statement like “don't assume that Apache reference implementations of OWFa specs will be coming soon” is completely groundless and irresponsible. The OWF goes further than the W3C and IETF policies, both of which provide the vast majority of technologies used by ASF projects.
>
> We are, and have always been open to feedback. Our dialog with the ASF existed from the very beginning, and I am unaware of any official outreach by the ASF on the agreement. While some ASF members have expressed concerns or requested changes, I took those to be forward looking and trying to go beyond the status quo of standards development. There is a clear line between the desire to improve things, and calling them unusable or incompatible.
>
> We don’t need this thread to show up when someone search the web for information about the OWF agreement and the ASF.
>
> EHL
write specs -- some of our volunteers do for other standards fora.
The ASF has not discussed OWFa internally, so whatever dialog you
are talking about must be informal. Regardless, my feedback to
Larry was about whether the ASF should promote the use of OWFa
by other standards writers, not about whether we would implement
something defined by a covered spec. My response was that I would not
use it as a spec license because it is flawed, Apache would not
use it as a spec license because it does not license the patents
adequately (unlike Apache's own license and CLAs), so why should
the ASF be promoting it to others?
The agreement I looked at is basically meaningless in regards
to the patent promise, so Apache would not consider it sufficient
as a substitute for having a CLA/grant on file. That does not mean
that Apache cannot implement software based on such a spec.
If company X submits an implementation of spec Y, then their
patent license will be based on the software grant they will
have to sign with Apache. If the spec is also licensed under
the OWFa, that's gravy -- it will make no difference to Apache
(just like the IETF and W3C specs).
I am curious about what is in the 0.9 agreement, since you seem
to think you made some changes in response to my comments and
yet I haven't seen those changes on any of the lists. I'll have
a look at it after your launch and let you know what I think.
Please understand, however, that I have been working to keep
the Web open for over fifteen years now. It is at the heart of
why we founded Apache; a lot of people don't realize just
how many times Apache has applied pressure to prevent one
company or another from owning the Web. If the OWFa helps
further that effort, then that'll be great. If, however,
what you release is flawed, then you should expect me to keep
pointing out those flaws until you fix them or demonstrate to
my satisfaction that they are not flaws. That's what you
bought into when you named this foundation after the stuff
I've been doing for so long.
....Roy
Eran Hammer-Lahav
We were unable to make changes to the Necessary Claims language which was your primary concern. We did make the disclosure separate from the actual document (to be placed on the site when people download it), and we removed the estoppels language as proposed. There might have been another small change but it escapes me now.
I don't think this is a matter of one side being wrong and the other right. I think Apache's patent license has its own significant limitations, but I agree that in terms of what each contributor agrees to license, the Apache CLA covers a deeper commitment (i.e. all enabling technology) but also narrower (only the contribution itself at the time of making it).
This is not something that is easy to apply to a specification as it is to software. But I agree we should continue our work and strive to find new models for licensing. This is just a first step, and while it doesn't accomplish everything we might want from this agreement, it does provide a very useful service for a group of communities and companies today.
I guess the only thing I want to ask if for you to, well, do what you do and help us strive for more balance and long term vision. :-)
EHL