From carson@siggraph.org Fri Oct 14 05:57:23 1994 Received: from siggraph.org by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA12522 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Fri, 14 Oct 1994 16:59:02 +0100 Received: from [192.187.162.141] (carson.slip.netcom.com [192.187.162.141]) by siggraph.org (8.6.5/8.6.4) with SMTP id KAA11900 for ; Fri, 14 Oct 1994 10:57:23 -0500 Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 10:57:23 -0500 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="========================_7945198==_" To: SC24@dkuug.dk From: carson@siggraph.org (Steve Carson) Subject: Liaison statement to OMG X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 --========================_7945198==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The following text was approved by SC24/WG6 PREMO RG this week at its meeting in the US. Unless there are objections, SC24 will forward this position to the OMG on Friday 22 October. Steve Carson Acting SC24 Chair --========================_7945198==_ Content-Type: text/plain; name="Liaison_Statement_to_OMG.TO"; charset="us-ascii" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Liaison_Statement_to_OMG.TO" ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 N 1284 Liaison Statement to the Object Management Group SC24 has received the Liaison Statement from the Object Management Group dated October 5, 1994. In response, SC24 first notes that this statement misrepresents the history of SC24's involvement with OMG specifications. The following chronology reflects SC24's view of the history of this relationship. History 1. In 1992, various OMG specifications were submitted to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 by US NB at the request of Sun, HP, and IBM, who were (and are) the copyright holders to the material. At the time these documents were first submitted, the US NB established informal liaison with OMG to insure they were aware of these submissions. 2. Both the OMG and Sun furnished SC24 with machine-readable forms of various OMG specifications, including the OMA, CORBA and COSS specifications, with the understanding that this material would be incorporated into SC24's standards. 3. During 1992, 1993 and 1994, SC24 used OMG material in the PREMO development effort, but found OMG specifications inadequate for our purposes and derived enhanced material. OMG was supplied with copies of the PREMO ID, WD and CD text over this period (as well as copies of all other SC24/WG6 PREMO RG documents.) All of these PREMO drafts incorporated material based on OMG specifications. 4. Believing that a potential existed for a mutually beneficial cooperative agreement for an open dialog, SC24 first requested that JTC1 grant the OMG Category C liaison status for the PREMO project in 1992. This request was approved by JTC1 as soon as JTC1 authorized the establishment of Category C liaisons in early 1994. SC24 appointed Drs. Paul ten Hagen from the Netherlands (the Convenor of SC24/WG6) as its liaison officer to OMG. (Although the SC24 Secretariat wrote a letter to OMG informing them of this appointment, Drs. ten Hagen has not yet begun receiving mailings from the OMG.) 5. The SC24/WG8 PREMO RG took an active role to ensure the success of its liaison with OMG. The steps taken included: a) inviting OMG to attend ISO meetings; b) offering to send ISO representatives to OMG meetings; and c) placing the OMG on the mailing lists of the PREMO RG, SC24/WG6 and SC24, as well as the e-mail reflectors for the PREMO RG and for SC24. 6. SC24 was pleased that, in February, 1994, the OMG Director of Program Management and Chairman of the OMG Liaison Committee, Dr. Jon Siegel, attended a PREMO RG meeting held in Amsterdam. He assisted SC24 in making modifications to material in the (then WD) version of PREMO. At this meeting, SC24 experts discussed problems with the OMG's CORBA IDL specification and the upwards compatible changes that SC24 thought were necessary to adapt the material to SC24's use. The OMG representative did not object to these changes. 7. Mistakenly believing that OMG held the copyright to OMG specifications, in May, 1994, an officer of the ANSI X3H3 committee, acting at his committee's request, wrote to OMG, formally requesting permission to incorporate OMG specifications in SC24's work. (SC24 has since learned that the original submitters of the material retain the joint copyright, from which they grant a license to OMG to publish the specification.) 8. In June, 1994, SC24 held a plenary meeting where PREMO Parts 1 and 2 were advanced to CD status. Although invited to attend, OMG choose to send no representatives. The PREMO RG wrote two liaison statements (SC24 N1195 and N1196) to the OMG listing the upwards compatible changes that SC24 had made to CORBA IDL and requesting that OMG consider these changes for incorporation in future versions of its specifications. No response has ever been received to the technical issues raised in these statements. 9. In July 1994, the US NB received a response to its request to use OMG material in SC24 standards. In a complete turnaround from its previous, cooperative attitude, the OMG rejected the request. 10. The US NB referred the rejection letter back to the original submitters (Sun, HP and IBM.) Legal advice was sought from corporate attorneys who advised that OMG was not, in fact, the copyright holder of the material, but itself had only a limited license to use the material granted by the original submitters, who included Sun, HP, and IBM. Based on this, Sun agreed to grant the necessary permissions to adapt portions of the CORBA and COSS specifications for use in SC24 standards. 11. Subsequently, SC24 received the attached strongly-worded liaison statement to SC24 (SC24 N1279), threatening to cease further cooperation with SC24 if it obtained permission to use OMG specifications from the original copyright holders rather than OMG itself. Although the SC24 PREMO RG was holding a meeting in the US, to which the OMG was invited, the week after the OMG issued this liaison statement, the OMG again chose not to participate. SC24's response 1. SC24 agrees with the OMG that: a) standards must be stable; b) modification must be through an established, deliberate process; and c) the appropriate way to modify an OMG specification is to focus efforts through the OMG. 2. SC24 has considered a number of alternative ways to respond to OMG's demands. While we do not agree that SC24 has used any copyrighted OMG material without permission (since we had the permission of one or more of the original copyright owners, including Sun, HP and IBM), we have nonetheless reluctantly concluded that SC24 must take steps to ensure that SC24 standards do not compromise OMG specifications. We are taking these steps because: a) The OMG appears unwilling to continue a cooperative agreement with SC24 to contribute to the development of International Standards with a cooperative attitude toward an open dialog. This is evident in statements in OMG's October 5th liaison statement to SC24 (SC24 N 1279, attached) such as: "This position is not going to change." This demonstrates that OMG is unwilling to continue in an open, cooperative dialog with SC24. b) The OMG is a closed organization that does not develop open, consensus based specifications. There are severe restrictions regarding who may submit a specification to OMG for adoption. Further, any changes to such a specification cannot be made without the consent of the submitter(s) of the technology. The OMG has shown that it is unwilling to allow changes to be made to its specifications as they are adopted as ISO standards through an open, consensus-based process, regardless of the minimal nature of such changes. c) The OMG has attempted to control the adoption of its specifications by retaining an inappropriate degree of intellectual property rights. SC24 strongly feels that no Publicly Available Specification (PAS) should be accepted for transposition into an ISO standard unless the owner of the specification agrees to place the specification under the control of an ISO editor who will ensure that appropriate changes are made to the document as it progresses through the ISO process. 3. The object model in PREMO (CD 14478) has only a distant relationship to any OMG source material. Material from OMG's OMA specification and many other sources were considered in the development of the PREMO object model. The material from OMG sources, in particular, was found to be unsuitable for direct use in an ISO standard due to various factors, including its quality, the degree of consensus it represented, and its alignment with existing JTC1 standards. 4. SC24 strongly believes that JTC1 should undertake the adoption of an openly-developed, consensus-based set of standards for object technology. These include an Interface Design Language, an Object Request Broker, a set of Object Services and other infrastructure required to support distributed object-based applications. SC24 has considerable experience taking advantage of OMG specifications in our standards and believe that -- while these OMG specifications are not directly suitable for fast-track transposition into ISO standards -- they are an excellent basis for a normal ISO development process. If and when openly-developed ISO object technology specifications become ava ilable, SC24 will seek to harmonize its standards with them. Until then, the integrity of SC24 standards must be protected by not referencing non-open specifications. 5. The OMG claims that it has established a good working relationship with SC21/WG7. SC24 notes that this relationship is at an early stage, roughly where the relationship between SC24 and OMG was over two years ago. At that time, SC24 also thought that it had an excellent relationship with OMG. SC24 also notes that SC21/WG7's scope is the abstract description of open interfaces. SC24 represent users of such interfaces. For this reason, SC24 experts -- who have attempted to apply OMG technology to real problems -- are more likely to uncover problems than those who deal with the specifications at an abstract level. 6. If a mutually beneficial relationship cannot be reestablished, SC24 must reluctantly consider requesting that JTC1 dissolve the Category C liaison status granted to OMG. SC24 is keen to renew its formerly productive relationship with the OMG, and is working to improve the relationship. If the OMG will drop its unreasonable demands that its specifications must be adopted by ISO without change, this reconciliation will be facilitated. Also, SC24 requests that OMG give serious consideration to the requested enhancements to IDL to the mutual benefit of all users of object technology. --========================_7945198==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" --------------------------------------------------------- Steve Carson phone: +1-310-675-2093 GSC Associates Inc. fax: +1-310-675-2159 13254 Jefferson Avenue e-mail: carson@siggraph.org Hawthorne, CA 90250 USA --------------------------------------------------------- --========================_7945198==_--