OWF 1.0 Draft Agreements Are Now Available for Public Review

Post date: Sep 27, 2010 4:37:2 PM

The OWF Legal Drafting Committee is pleased to announce the publication of the set of OWF v1.0 agreements for public review.  The public review period will close October 8th.  At that point, the Drafting Committee will consider and respond to all comments, and will refer a final version of the agreements to the OWF Board of Directors for final approval. 

 This set of agreements includes the following documents:

• CLA – Copyright and Patent – Draft 1.0.  This Contributor License Agreement ("CLA") covers both copyright and patents for contributions.

• Open Web Foundation Agreement (“OWFa”) – Draft 1.0.  This is an updated version of the OWFa and is intended to cover the entire specification.

• CLA – Copyright only – Draft 1.0.  This is a copyright only CLA, which is similar to the previously approved 0.9 CLA updated to conform to the language in the proposed 1.0 agreements.

  • OWFa– Patent only – Draft 1.0.  This agreement is for use in contexts were copyright is already covered by a separate grant.  For example, this agreement could be used for making a commitment to standards body where copyright is already covered by the organization’s rules. 

You can also review the FAQ for additional background.

Please submit any comments you have to open-web-legal@googlegroups.com, add your comments to document, or email the chairs at the addresses listed below.

For background, the CLAs apply only to your specific contributions to a specification while the specification is being developed.  The CLAs provides a license to your contributions so that other contributors freely can include your contributions – and elaborate on them – in the community effort to develop the specification. It establishes terms and conditions for receiving and using written contributions to a functional specification. It also prepares the way for participants to sign the OWFa for the “final” specification. 

The OWFa applies to functional specifications after they reach a final state and are published, and the grants in the OWFa agreements cover the entire specification, regardless of who made the underlying contributions.

If you wish to learn more about the work of the OWF Legal Drafting group, send email to either of the committee co-chairs listed below.

Thanks,

Lawrence Rosen (lrosen@rosenlaw.com)

David Rudin (davidrud@microsoft.com)

Open Web Foundation Legal Committee Co-Chairs