NathanX 1202412533|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Feb 5, 2008 VWIF meeting
Attendees
Terri Ertlmeier
Chuck Powers
Mike Danielsen
Peter Haggar
Suzy Deffeyes
Mic Bowman
George Goodman
Paul Fahn
JP McCormick
Rick Knowles
Mark Lentczner
Jon Watte
Summary
The meeting was hosted by Motorola with Terri providing dial in and Mike taking notes. Mic provided an analysis of our positions on forum policy which was the focus of the meeting. Mic provided a document to all ahead of time for the discussion. This document, everyone should have but it is copied at the bottom just in case.
Three things we agree on
1) We want specifications and standards that are, to the best knowledge of all forum participants, free of IP encumbrances. Note, however, that we cannot guarantee that a specification is unencumbered because we do not know when a specification touches on IP owned by a company that does not participate in the forum (and at some point we probably need to think about how to address that situation).
2) We agree that any IP generated as part of the activities of forum are “owned” by all members of the forum. More likely it means that all members of the forum are granted RF licenses to all material that is generated, for example, during working group sessions, and wiki or forum posts.
3) In order to limit liability, activities in the forum should be explicitly scoped (at some level). The goal is not to encumber the standards & specifications, but to be “intentional” about handling IP.
Can we define a scope of activities that determine first set of work items that is sufficient for lawyers to agree on RF?
One of the things holding back approval of the alliance proposal is that the scope of alliance has not been specific in its definition. There are many views of what the scope should be, but Peter said that the scope is balanced between open ended and too tight because of the unknown. Others pointed out that overall forum charter can be broad, but the working group charter should be more focused. (I think we are all in agreement with this. If not please follow up.) But at this point no working groups have been defined. It is the fear of many participants that membership in the forums will require close monitoring of the WG's even if the forum participant is not a member of the WG.
Scope (1.8 of the Alliance proposal)
1.8 "Purpose" means the development, enhancement, and promotion of programming technologies and techniques,
implementation profiles, testing software or scenarios, development toolkits, runtimes and other relevant material to enable
interoperability between heterogeneous Virtual Worlds including the publication of Forum roadmaps, Specifications, testing
materials, and sample implementations that can be used to promote Virtual World interoperability technologies and techniques.
Can we define a scope of activities that determine first set of work items that is sufficient for lawyers to agree on RF.
Chuck replied that the devil is in the details but if we have sufficiently well defined scope, then members of the WG can agree to RF with withdrawal before WD draft.
The forum asked Mark if he would be willing to write a more specific scope than was provided in the proposal.
Can we agree on a structure that is low overhead but allows us to grow?
Chuck will look into various organizations in order to report back with some examples for us to look at.
How do we ensure that there are no IP encumbrances from members of the forum?
It was suggested that a WG participant will withdraw from the group if it wishes to protect IP before the working draft is released. This was met with general consensus.
Mic will draft a new proposal
Intel will host next weeks meeting.