In the firing line
The call for an OASIS boycott is the latest in a series of skirmishes between industrial interests that claim intellectual property rights and open source and free-software advocates.
The most significant conflict to date launched in 2001 after the W3C floated a proposal. The plan would have made the W3C's rules friendlier to member organisations that wanted to introduce patented technologies into standards.
The resulting row led the W3C into a highly public re-examination of its commitment to royalty-free standards. In 2003, it produced a revised patent policy, which made it all but impossible to standardise patented technologies that bear royalties.
OASIS billed its revised policy, set to take effect on 15 April, as a compromise to make its system more amenable to open source advocates. Tuesday's email campaign -- and particularly the noteworthiness of its signatories -- indicates how its move was received.
"The intellectual property policy seems to be a sop that they threw us," said Bruce Perens, a longtime open source advocate. "There's the option for standards to be royalty-free but there's no strong incentive."
OASIS bristled at the claim that it hadn't considered open source developers in revising its policy. Gannon said the group had numerous members involved in open source development that had approved the revision and that OASIS had taken special care to vet the policy with intellectual-property lawyers.
Gannon suggested it was possible but unlikely that OASIS might revise its policy again anytime soon.
"We looked at the needs of the open source community in coming up with this revision, and therefore I cannot see what else they are advocating," Gannon said. "If a group of these people want to engage in a detailed review and make additional suggestions after considering how this is implemented, then they should submit that to our staff and we'll put it before the board. We have a process for continuing revision. But it's not clear to me what other changes need to be made."
The open source industrial complex?
The conflict between open source and intellectual-property demands has become particularly acute now that many technology giants have embraced open source products such as Linux.
Last week, IBM pledged $100 million for Linux support in its upcoming Workplace software, a Microsoft Office competitor, for example. IBM routinely files more software patents every year than any other company and holds more than 10,000 of them.
Last month, Big Blue extended an olive branch to open source developers, designating 500 of those patents royalty-free. Sun made a similar offer to certain developers, and Computer Associates followed suit last week.
When it comes to standards-setting bodies like the W3C and OASIS, standards advocates call patents unfair, in light of open source contributions to the industry.
"We don't see why, given that the open source community is providing the operating systems going forward for a good deal of e-business, that we should be excluded from standards," Perens said. "OASIS needs to resolve to be an open standards organisation, because open source and software patents don't mix."
Defenders of RAND-tolerant standards policies say standards suffer from exclusion of royalty-bearing technologies. OASIS saw substantial new involvement by companies including Microsoft, IBM and BEA after the W3C's revised patent policy sent those companies to OASIS to develop Web services standards.
Perens attacked OASIS for having become a refuge for those companies.
"There's always going to be some standards organisation somewhere that accommodates people who want to have royalty-bearing patents in their standards," Perens said. "With Microsoft, it's a competitive strategy and it has no place in a standards organisation. We feel that for OASIS to have any stature as a standards organisation, rather than something that just panders to the patent holders, it needs a better policy."
