Over at ZDNet there's a fast and furious thread running, beginning with a post by David Berlind called “Apache Falls Victim to OASIS Patent Shelter.” Suffice it to say that David is connecting the dots rather differently than I did a few days ago when I blogged on the same factual situation.

Over at ZDNet theres a fast and furious thread running, beginning with a post by David Berlind called “Apache Falls Victim to OASIS Patent Shelter.” Suffice it to say that David is connecting the dots rather differently than I did a few days ago when I blogged on the same factual situation in a post called Open Source Licensing Conflicts and Security Standards (Where Have I Heard This Before?)

Basically, David is saying that the fact that OASIS has a policy thats not as simpatico to open source licensing as the one adopted by the W3C makes OASIS a “patent haven” where IPR holders can take their specifications instead of the W3C. Since Im legal counsel to OASIS, I wont say anything more, other than to note that while the trend is towards following the W3Cs lead, very few software standard setting organizations today have a policy to match the W3Cs.

The gist of my response over at ZDNet is that the world is a whole lot more complicated than David makes out. I would be delighted if there was some sort of pixie dust that you could sprinkle on every IPR policy in every organization and instantly create an open software-friendly option in every single one of them. But if you ever find some of that stuff, I hope youll let me sprinkle some from the Senate gallery before they start discussing Supreme Court nominees.

You can see my full response at If life were only so simple…