Hi David, Thanks for the clarifications.
On Sep 17, 2007, at 5:57 AM, David L Kaminsky wrote:
On the standard itself, not surprisingly, the DMTF encourages implementations, and at submission, the DMTF requires this text: "Permission to copy, display, perform, modify and distribute thespecification, and to authorize others to do the foregoing, in any medium without fee or royalty is hereby granted for the purpose of developing andevaluating the Specification.
But the intended use here is not "developing and evaluating" the Specification, but implementing it. Is there a grant of license for implementations?
The Specification may be published as one ormore separate documents including for example as ASCII formats, schema ormetadata files rather than solely as a single document. "Co-Developers agree to grant a license to third parties, under royalty-free and otherwise reasonable, non-discriminatory terms andconditions, to their respective Essential Patent Rights (as that term is defined in the DMTF Patent and Technology Policy) that are necessary toimplement the Specification in accordance with the DMTF Patent and Technology Policy."
This required grant of patent rights is a good indicator that implementing the Specification doesn't get Apache into potential trouble, but I'd still like to see an explicit statement regarding the rights of independent implementations to use the IP contained in the Specification itself.
Regards, Craig Craig Russell DB PMC, OpenJPA PMC [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://db.apache.org/jdo
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