[Openstandaarden] RAND licensing & OASIS

[Peter Vandenabeele]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 08:39:52AM +0100, Peter Strickx wrote:
> The PICTS (Permanent ICT Steering group) from the Belgian Federal 
> Government is on the verge of
> accepting OASIS as a 'recognized Standards organization' (ie. standards 
> from OASIS would be 'recommended' standards and become mandatory 
> standards within a 3-6 month time frame). However, an essential element 
> in our 'standards policy' is the availability of  open source  and free 
> software implementations of  the approved standards (or at least the 
> possibility to have them available as open source/free software in the 
> future).  If the new  RAND licensing scheme hinders open source and/or 
> free software implementations we will no longer adopt OASIS standards as 
> 'recognized' standards within our organization.

Do I understand correctly that PICTS will:

* initially accept OASIS "in general"
* case-by-case reject standards from OASIS that would not allow
  FOSS implementations because certain parts do only allow RAND
  implementations and do not allow Free SW implementations

Would it not be better to reject OASIS as a whole, in line with the
request that was made by numerous Free SW and Open Source advocates ?

Thanks,

Peter