Attendees
Jonathan Sobel - Cisco Systems
Bill Morrison - Cisco Systems
Jon Watte - Forterra Systems
Mike Danielson - Motorola
Stefano Crosta - Cisco Systems
Doug ? - Motorola
Terri Ertlmeier - Motorola
Mic Bowman - Intel
Suzy Deffeyes - IBM
Peter Haggar - IBM
J.P. McCormick - ActiveWorlds
Rick Noll - Active Worlds
Membership Agreement, Current Status
Cisco
No major objections, a few minor revisions to be made, lawyers working on revisions now.
Motorola
No update, waiting for feedback.
Intel
Initial review positive, formal review in progress, feedback next week.
Forterra
3 concerns about currently proposed agreement:
- openness: Agreement should include language that mandates reasonable timeframe for publishing meeting minutes, shared specifications, outputs of working groups, etc. Ideally, this means publication external to group. This preempts predatory patents and ensures adequate communications.
- openajax: Perhaps OpenAjax is not a good starting point for an agreement, because the scale of virtual worlds development is very different from the scale of producing AJAX libraries. Specifically, the requirement to use the Apache license may be too specific for the breadth of virtual world development. Maybe just say: any open source license (e.g., any approved by opensource.org).
- intellectual property issues: Suppose we agree to standardize on the existing method/system of some member. Current proposal forces member to give up their IP just because it was selected as a standard, without even giving them opportunity to withdraw from the VWIF. There was a lot of discussion on this point. It is also undesirable to swing too far the other direction and allow someone to retain IP in a predatory way through intentional non-disclosure.
We agreed that the overarching goals are to prevent predatory practices (such as intentionally being silent about ownership until after something is selected as a standard) and to prevent accidental loss of IP (accidentally obligating one's company to give up valuable IP just by suggesting something as a standard). Jon Watte took the task of investigating replacement language.
ActiveWorlds
About dues:
- What happens if someone doesn't pay?
- Is there a cap/limit on the dues?
- Do we want to go ahead and set out guidelines?
Peter @ IBM: Agreement leaves room to establish rules later about finances and dues. In other words, the agreement does not preclude dues being imposed later, but it does not set any binding rules about the handling of payment or nonpayment now.
Why governed by laws of NY?
Peter: no known reason. Probably just that IBM is incorporated in NY.
Discussion of Use Cases
Postponed until next week.
Next Meeting (11 December)
To be hosted by ActiveWorlds.
It was suggested that Peter attempt to bring an IBM attorney to the call next week, to provide more legal context to the discussion.
