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Business Committee RFP Attachment
This section contains the text of the Business Committee RFP
attachment concerning commercial availability requirements placed
on submissions.
This attachment, available separately as document omg/98-03-01,
was approved by the OMG Board in February 1998.
Commercial considerations
in OMG technology adoption
A1 Introduction
OMG wishes to encourage rapid commercial adoption of the
specifications it publishes. To this end, there must be neither
technical, legal nor commercial obstacles to their implementation.
Freedom from the first is largely judged through technical review
by the relevant OMG Technology Committee; the second two are the
responsibility of the OMG Business Committee. The BC also looks
for evidence of a commitment by a submitter to the commercial
success of products based on the submission.
A2 Business Committee evaluation criteria
A2.1 Viable to implement across platforms
While it is understood that final candidate OMG submissions
often combine technologies before they have all been implemented
in one system, the Business Committee nevertheless wishes to see
evidence that each major feature has been implemented, preferably
more than once, and by separate organisations. Pre-product
implementations are acceptable. Since use of OMG specifications
should not be dependent on any one platform, cross-platform
availability and interoperability of implementations should be
also be demonstrated.
A2.2 Commercial availability
In addition to demonstrating the existence of implementations
of the specification, the submitter must also show that products
based on the specification are commercially available, or will be
within 12 months of the date when the specification was
recommended for adoption by the appropriate Task Force. Proof of
intent to ship product within 12 months might include:
- A public product
announcement with a shipping date within the time limit.
- Demonstration of a prototype
implementation and accompanying draft user documentation.
Alternatively, and at the Business Committee's discretion,
submissions may be adopted where the submitter is not a
commercial software provider, and therefore will not make
implementations commercially available. However, in this case
the BC will require concrete evidence of two or more
independent implementations of the specification being used by
end-user organisations as part of their businesses.
Regardless of which requirement is in use, the submitter
must inform the OMG of completion of the implementations when
commercially available.
A2.3 Access to Intellectual Property Rights
OMG will not adopt a specification if OMG is aware of any
submitter, member or third party which holds a patent, copyright
or other intellectual property right (collectively referred to in
this policy statement as "IPR") which might be infringed
by implementation of such specification, unless OMG believes that
such IPR owner will grant a license to implementers (whether OMG
members or not) on non-discriminatory and commercially reasonable
terms which wish to implement the specification. Accordingly, the
submitter must certify that it is not aware of any claim that the
specification infringes any IPR of a third party or that it is
aware and believes that an appropriate non-discriminatory license
is available from that third party. Except for this certification,
the submitter will not be required to make any other warranty, and
specifications will be offered by OMG for implementation "as
is". If the submitter owns IPR to which an implementation of
a specification based upon its submission would necessarily be
subject, it must certify to the Business Committee that it will
make a suitable license available to any implementer on
non-discriminatory and commercially reasonable terms, to permit
development and commercialisation of an implementation that
includes such IPR.
It is the goal of the OMG to make all of its specifications
available with as few impediments and disincentives to adoption as
possible, and therefore OMG strongly encourages the submission of
technology as to which royalty-free licenses will be available.
However, in all events, the submitter shall also certify that any
necessary license will be made available on commercially
reasonable, non-discriminatory terms. The submitter is responsible
for disclosing in detail all known restrictions, placed either by
the submitter or, if known, others, on technology necessary for
implementation of the specification.
A2.4 Publication of the specification
Should the submission be adopted, the submitter must grant OMG
(and its sublicensees) a world-wide, royalty-free licence to edit,
store, duplicate and distribute both the specification and works
derived from it (such as revisions and teaching materials). This
requirement applies only to the written specification, not to any
implementation of it.
A2.5 Continuing support
The submitter must show a commitment to continue supporting the
technology underlying the specification after OMG adoption, for
instance by showing the BC development plans for future revisions,
enhancement or maintenance.
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