Hi Claire,
Sorry for the delay.
Is Debian still a member of the OASIS group?
Yes. Our membership expires in June.
I just looked at their member list, and didn't see us listed.
We are listed as a "Contributor", rather than a sponsor, owing to the fact that we pay a reduced rate:
http://www.oasis-open.org/about/contributors.php
I'm asking because of Lawrence Rosen's ``A Call to Action in OASIS'', which I saw in today's LWN [1]. Apparently OASIS is adopting a new intellectual-property policy that would allow standards based on patent-encumbered technology, which would be a bad thing for the open-source community in general, and Debian in particular.
Yes, I'd been working from within OASIS to address the issues with the new IPR policy, but never got any traction.
I also requested legal review by posting to debian-legal last November,
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/11/msg00142.html
but didn't receive any feedback.
There are a lot of big names [2] at the end of the post, not including our DPL.
I've asked that my name be added to the list{1} as well, but nothing has happened.
I honestly have no idea when or how the solicitation for signatures went out.
I know Bruce Perens is addressing this issue now, but I'n not sure what the status is.
No doubt we will discuss this in full when it comes time to renew Debian's OASIS membership. We may decide to bow out, or we could stay in & work to directly effect change. For example, I'd be willing to run for a position on the OASIS Board of Directors the next time there is an election.
Hope that helps...
Cheers, Mark
{1} http://perens.com/Articles/OASIS.html
Claire
[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/124548/
[2] Lawrence Rosen, Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Eben Moglen, Marten Mickos, John Weathersby, John Terpstra, Tim O'Reilly, Tony Stanco, Don Marti, Michael Tiemann, Andrew Aitken, Karen Copenhaver, Doug Levin, Dan Ravicher, Larry Augustin, Mitchell Kapor, Russell Nelson, Guido van Rossum, Daniel Quinlan, Murugan Pal, Stuart Cohen, Danese Cooper, Eric Raymond, Mark Webbink, Ken Coar, Doc Searls, Brian Behlendorf.
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