[occi-wg] moving forward

[Alexis Richardson]

Thanks Richard.

Just to explain what the patent issue is in more detail, the concern
that Sam raised is articulated in this blog post:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13654

I would be very interested in what the OGF policy is here.


On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Richard Davies
<richard.davies at elastichosts.com> wrote:
> Alexis Richardson wrote:
>> The notion of taking API X as a 'starting point' is based on it being:
>>
>> * open (licensing)
>> * concrete (unambiguous, discussable, implementable)
>> * modifiable (a licensing issue)
>> * extensible (eg to add functionality or integration points)
>>
>> Sun and GG (and EH) meet those criteria.  Given the Sun documents we
>> could take the GG and EH work and "make something better".  We could
>> also take the OCCI work and make something better still.
>>
>> This process works when multiple users and implementers support it.
>> That's what I am looking for.  The keyword is multiple.  Anything else
>> is just hot air.
>
> This works as a process, and we would support it starting from any of the
> Sun, GG or EH APIs.
>
> In all cases there would be some work to do - for example on storage, EH
> does not yet support non-persistent "scratch" drives for an instance, GG
> does not support multiple drives on a server, and I'm not sure if Sun
> supports persistent drives which survive a server being stopped.
>
>
> If we go this route, we must to take Sam and Gary's concerns regarding
> patents seriously. It is not sufficient for the API _specification_ to be
> under Creative Commons if all implementers will still have to pay patent
> royalties to a vendor when they implement it. "Reasonable and
> Non-Discriminatory" licensing is also not sufficient - as Sam and Gary have
> said there would need to be a "Royalty-Free" patent pledge stating that the
> future OCCI API will not require any licence or payment.
>
>
> The patent situation is currently unclear. Fortunately however, we have
> representation from all three of Sun, GG and EH on this list, so OGF can
> extract the necessary royalty-free patent pledges!
>
>
> Tim / Thijs - can you arrange for Sun to make a royalty-free patent pledge
> regarding the Sun Cloud APIs, so that OCCI could consider building from them?
>
>
> Randy - if you are still the right person at GoGrid
> (http://cloudscaling.com/blog/administrivia/my-gogrid-status) then can you
> arrange for GoGrid to make a royalty-free patent pledge if OCCI were to
> build from your APIs?
>
>
> myself (ElasticHosts) - I'm happy to commit here and now. If OCCI wants to
> build from the EH APIs then we will immediately license them under Create
> Commons or any similar license. We have no patents covering our APIs, and
> I'm willing to sign any royalty-free patent pledge that OCCI gives me.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard.
> _______________________________________________
> occi-wg mailing list
> occi-wg at ogf.org
> http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/occi-wg
>