Subject: Second attachment to SC 24 position on OMG

From: Steve Carson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 11:26:32 -0600

This would be the second attachment to the proposed SC 24 statement to JTC
1 concerning the OMG's PAS submitter application:

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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. The 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 granted 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
available, 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. SC24 will work hard over the next few months (through its liaison
officer to OMG and its other officers) to resolve the present difficulties
with OMG. 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.

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Steve Carson                 phone:   +1-505-521-7399
GSC Associates Inc.          fax:     +1-505-521-9321
5272 Redman Road             e-mail:  [email-masked]
Las Cruces, NM 88011 USA
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