RE: [chairs] Comments and IP

["Considine, Toby \(Facilities Technology Office\)" <Toby.Considine@unc.edu>]

 Here, I think, the insights of "old-fashioned" e-commerce apply, where
a one-click check-out was considered a significant competitive
advantage.

1- There are those who are actually willing to do the hard work of the
committee and work for companies that will give them work time to do so.
2- There are those who are inspired to do the hard work of the committee
and work for companies and sneak in a few hours when they can
3- There are the drive-bys, who are really the bulk of the population,
who are concerned primarily with their day jobs, and will if they have
an hour next Tuesday afternoon, contribute as long as they do not have
to interrupt their thoughts, drop it and come back later, the web form
does not drop their text, ...

While we are always trying to increase (1) AND (2), these comments are
about trying to get input from (3), the vast majority of the target
audience for any standard.

tc


-----Original Message-----
From: James Bryce Clark [mailto:jamie.clark@oasis-open.org] 
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2006 4:38 PM
To: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com; patrick@durusau.net
Subject: RE: [chairs] Comments and IP

At 07:12 AM 4/14/2006, Hal Lockhart wrote:
>Hi Patrick, how have you been?
>I believe the issue is that OASIS needs a positive confirmation that 
>the party providing feedback actively agrees to the terms of the 
>Feedback License (Appendix A of the IPR Policy). Since this commits the

>party to things like patent licensing terms, mere notice is not 
>sufficient. They have to sign and return the form.
>This is not my area of expertise, but perhaps a click-thru license on 
>the web page might be sufficient. However I don't think an automated 
>message on a mailing list would ever be sufficient to create a binding 
>legal commitment.
>Hal

     We do want to make it easy for people to give OASIS comments, in a 
reasonably safe manner.   "Reasonably" means taking an appropriate and 
conventional level of cautions, but not going so overboard as to
unnecessarily discourage input.
     Opinions might differ, even in a community of e-commerce experts
(or their employers, or their lawyers) about whether
electronically-formed agreements, licenses or assents are enforceable.
     Perhaps the "dead-tree" lobby has a big fan club in some licensing
departments.
     Having worked for some years on the international enforceability of
electronic agreements and signatures, prior to joining OASIS, personally
I have little doubt that safe wholly-electronic practices are possible.
Some of our colleagues who are vigorously promoting commercial systems
that incorporate WSBPEL, ebXML, WS-TX, WSCAF or BTP might agree.
     Perhaps I should raise this concern with our Board's IPR committee.
JoAnn and Patrick, do you think we're missing significant amounts of
specification input from people who would give it, if it were 
easier to assent to our feedback terms?   Do we have some reason to
believe 
that the forms are a turn-off?
     Cordially  Jamie

~   James Bryce Clark
~   Director, Standards Development, OASIS
~   jamie.clark@oasis-open.org