OSA (was: [Fsfe-uk] osc? who?)

[Graham Seaman]

Alex Hudson wrote:

> > I saw John Terpstra was involved; as far as I 
> > know (which really isn't much and may be wrong) his current agenda is 
> > fairly aligned with Sun's.
> >    
>
> Based on my recent conversations with him, I don't think this is the
> case, but maybe I'm not understanding what you mean. Certainly, OSC's
> briefings at the moment are revolving around open standards and John is
> crucial to getting over what that really means: in particular, that
> software patents pose a particular problem to open standards.
>  
I'm not sure I know what I mean either! The comment was based on the 
observations that:
- Sun is a sponsor of the Open Standards Alliance
- IBM is not a sponsor of the Open Standards Alliance
- I have seen John criticize IBM' s position on open standards (for not 
emphasizing sublicensing)
- I trust Sun's involvement with open standards as far as I could throw 
them (actually, I don't trust IBM's motives either but Sun seems to have 
a more immediate interest in manipulating things because of the whole 
Java issue)
- The OSA is very clearly, both in documentation and in the background 
of the people involved (at least the ones I know of, with the partial 
exception of Bruce Perens) on the 'open source' rather than the 'free 
software' side

but I really don't know what's going on here; on the one hand, maybe 
this is effectively rumour-mongering on my part and I should shut up 
(I'm certainly not accusing anyone, John Terpstra in particular, of 
doing anything underhand, just suggesting that the issues may be more 
complex than they appear); on the other hand, I do think the involvement 
of very big companies is something that  should be talked about,  
because it's so easy for them to apply  pressure on the direction things 
go. 

If the OSA's main purpose is to stop software patents, all power to 
them. That isn't how their web site reads, though.

Graham