[Fiware-wpa] Open Specs and Checkpoint 11a

[Sandfuchs, Thorsten]

Hi Juanjo,
I was as well reassessing it another time, if I got it right, I think the reviewers refer somewhere to "human readable" information and not legal texts, therefore the pointer to the Legal Notice does not apply as you said.
The checkpoint itself mentions "IPR provisions of the individual GE Open Specifications" - therefore the focus is on the Spec and not the Implementation.

I do agree that we have to separate the two and I would agree that we should firstly focus on the Open Spec in order to address this checkpoint.

Yes SAP was already trying to provide this "human readable" format in the first version and this is an attempt that others would adopt it. We even improved this now and added on the open specs/architecture description level:

This Open Specification is exploitable for proprietary 3rd party products and is exploitable for open source 3rd party products, including open source licenses that require patent pledges. If the owner (SAP) of this GE spec holds a patent that is essential to create a conforming implementation of the GE spec (i.e. it is impossible to write a conforming implementation without violating the patent) then a license to that patent is deemed granted to the implementation.

We think this addresses exactly this checkpoint: it allows an would-be implementor to understand that he is in a safe harbor concerning implementations based on this Open Spec.

For the software part I'm with you that there is already something to submit it - without being blocked by this IPR question. Currently we are gathering at least the information on public availability of binaries in the "FI-WARE SW Release report's. And in the end as part of the catalogue.

Best,
                                                                /Thorsten

From: Juanjo Hierro [mailto:jhierro at tid.es]
Sent: Donnerstag, 16. Mai 2013 09:11
To: Sandfuchs, Thorsten
Cc: fiware-wpl at lists.fi-ware.eu; fiware-wpa at lists.fi-ware.eu
Subject: Re: Open Specs and Checkpoint 11a

Dear Thorsten,

  Thanks for raising this out.   I honestly believe your analysis goes far beyond what needed to be fixed here.

  In my honest opinion, comments from the reviewers were indeed derived from the fact that the "Legal Notice" that should accompany each Open Specification hadn't been yet finalized and was not homogeneous across GE Open Specifications.   In theory, we have managed to produce a Legal Notice that, regarding IPR provisions, takes into account "the potential questions and concerns of would be implementers", therefore we should be able to justify that we cover their comment already.

  Also in my honest opinion, the text that SAP seems to have added is just redundant with what this new Legal Notice says.   Of course, redundancy doesn't hard, but maybe will introduce confusion (how will people interpret it if that "clarification" is not present in other Open Specs ?) so I would try to avoid them or, in any case, I'll put the sentence in an "Introduction" section of the wiki page that gathers all FI-WARE GE Open Specifications.

  Last but not least, IPRs on FI-WARE GE Open Specifications and IPRs on FI-WARE GE implementations (GEis) should be treated separately.   IPRs on FI-WARE GEis should be treated in the FI-WARE Catalogue (Terms and Conditions tab in associated entry) while IPR on FI-WARE GE Open Specifications is covered in the Legal Notice.

  Strictly speaking, checkpoint 11.a is covered through the Legal Notice.   Most probably the reviewers are also concerned about IPRs on FI-WARE GEis so therefore we should make sure that we arrive at the review with that point also covered but not necessarely by the end of this week (though probably by the end of this month :-)

  The urgent point now is to fix the Legal Notice and provide the instructions to include the reference to that new Legal Notice text.   I'll check where we are right now and will get back to you all.

  Best regards,

-- Juanjo



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email: jhierro at tid.es<mailto:jhierro at tid.es>

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On 15/05/13 17:23, Sandfuchs, Thorsten wrote:
Some small additions to point 1 to make it more complete.

Dear colleagues,
While browsing the reviewers checkpoints I was wondering if we already addressed this point in the current version of the open specs "enough" and I think we wanted to take this discussion offline. So here it is:

Checkpoint 11a
Documentation of the final list of GEs for which Open Specifications will be written and the IPR provisions of the individual GE Open Specifications; the IPR provisions should take into account the potential questions and concerns of would be implementers.
Status: Not achieved
Due date: Urgently needed

What will be our positioning here on the next review? Did we achieve this?

Analysis
In general I see this information present in some of the entries of the catalogue - but it is for sure not compiled within the OpenSpecification deliverable and not within the summary page of https://forge.fi-ware.eu/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/fiware/index.php/Summary_of_FI-WARE_Open_Specifications and there is no "final list" being exposed somewhere centrally.

Decision need
Firstly we need to decide if we should/still need to fix this. Then if we can even fix this, given the tight schedule, prior to the open spec delivery.

=>  I think we definitely should fix it and try to deliver the solution within this week for the open spec deliverable, if possible (although this might be really tough) - if not then we should have this definitely for the next review ready and released to the public.


Two ways forward

1.       If I got it right, this mainly focuses on open specification and the foreground IP around it.

In general the statements requested potentially would be:

-          This Open Spec is exploitable for FI-PPP members only

-          This Open Spec is exploitable for proprietary 3rd party products

-          This Open Spec is exploitable for open source 3rd party products

-          This Open Spec is exploitable for open source 3rd party products, including open source licenses that require patent pledges (see below)

-          If the owner of this GE spec holds a patent that is essential to create a conforming implementation of the GE spec (i.e. it is impossible to write a conforming implementation without violating the patent) then a license to that patent is deemed granted to the implementation


But IANAL and I think we would need to start compiling this firstly.

SAP e.g. introduces a text to the Open Specification: SAP strives to make the specifications of this Generic Enabler available under IPR rules that allow for a exploitation and sustainable usage both in Open Source as well as proprietary, closed source products to maximize adoption.
Would that be sufficient already if partners would adopt this or similar text? How can we have the needed "final list" or how can we compile this final list, and how will this be then submitted to the reviewers? As part of the public wiki?

Options I see:

1.A.Introduce the information of IPR statements on the Open Spec wiki page as part of the Template "Open spec brief" or like SAP did it

1.B. Introduce the information on the Summary pages (linked above)

1.C. Introduce a new page which summarizes this information in "one" list

1.D.Introduce a page in the catalogue which displays the relevant information (given that the catalogue pends a lot of edits, this might be not suitable for submission of the deliverable)

I would opt for 1.A.

Next steps:

-          Find a consensus on what statements are requested

-          Decide on where to put them


2.       There might be implications from this checkpoint for the software related IPR and the levels of IPR provisioning. These software components roughly follow this metric (right?):
[] FI-WARE
[] FI-PPP
[] planned for OIL
[] 3rd party on request
[] 3rd party publicly available (free to use)
[] commercially exploitable (free to use, exploit and contribute)
Or something more specific:
[] open source with licence XXXX

                I think for many software related packages, currently there is only the FI-PPP collaboration agreement is relevant - but what is needed here and what some partners can provide is: sustainable software provisioning clearly envisioning usage of the software for 3rd parties other than FI-PPP - for WP3 this is more than 50% of the GEs (and yes, there are some where this is clearly NOT the case)

=>  Would this be part of the exercise as well to compile this list in relation to software related assets and have this finally compiled somewhere, where a human being can find it?

Best,
                                                                /Thorsten

--

Thorsten Sandfuchs

SAP AG | Vincenz-Priessnitz-Strasse 1 | D-76131 Karlsruhe, Germany | www.sap.com<http://www.sap.com/>


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