[Arm-netbook] EOMA - Open Specification?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, May 26, 2014 16:34:16 Elena ``of Valhalla'' wrote:
> In other messages you mentioned that it wasn't you but your associate
> who blacklisted Aaron Seigo from using the EOMA name *and* from
> building an EOMA compatible products, the same associate who seems
> also to be not really interesting in contributing with the FLOSS
> community anymore.

Please keep in mind that not only did I never receive notice of such a 
"blacklisting" (email, phone, postal mail .. anything would have sufficed; the 
first I heard of it was on this list from Luke), but this followed over a year 
of QiMOD failing to meet project deadlines they committed to including a 
tablet case design and a functional PCB that worked with the EOMA68. Even 
simply getting EOMA68 samples for engineers to work with was a struggle as 
they sold samples to people rather than get them into the hands of people 
working on products, something I only found out after the fact by talking with 
people who had purchased them.

> If, as it seems from those messages, it is your associate who has
> control over the EOMA specs, how can we be sure that the openness
> you want for it will be maintained?

That is really the key point, imho.

Controlling the EOMA68 trademark makes a lot of sense for the reasons Luke 
raised: to have a standard mean anything you need product compliance, and the 
best tool for enforcing that is a program of testing with the reward being 
access to a controlled bit of intellectual property (e.g. a brand).

However, that trademark needs to go into a properly designed organization with 
a published and transparent mandate that defines that body's responsibilities 
and limits. QiMOD knows this, as we talked about this a number of times. It 
hasn't happened, and I wonder if it ever will.

It could have been worse, though: their original plan, as they shared it with 
me, was to use *patents* to control the EOMA68 standard via licensing. 
Personally, I found patenting an open hardware platform a bizarre approach in 
the context of "open hardware". I tried to talk them out of leveraging patents 
and recommended using trademark instead, which they appear to have adopted.

To my knowledge, they are making these decisions without what I would consider 
sufficient legal council (self-filing patents, not having a lawyer specializing 
in IP on retainer, etc.) That ought to be a warning flag for those wanting to 
participate with EOMA68.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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