PMC Minutes for 2009-03-18

Attendees

John O'Hara - JPMorgan
Rob Godfrey - JPMorgan
Pranta Das - Cisco
Carl Trieloff - RedHat
Rafael Schloming - RedHat
Gordon Sim - RedHat
Greg Lorence - 29west
Pieter Hintjens - iMatix
Alexis Richardson - RabbitMQ
Martin Sustrik - Imatix
Keith Owen - Credit Suisse
Mark Blair - Credit Suisse
Roshan D'Mello - Credit Suisse
Chuck Linton - Tervela
Hanno Klein - DBS
Andreas Moravec - DBS
Navin Kamath - Progress
Matthew Arrott - TWIST

Agenda

1: Update on AMQP 1.0 Draft materials

Review comments

2: Face 2 Face

Day 1 Logistics - public attendance

Personal invitations RSVP status?

Max. capacity?

Day 2; Dinner plans

Materials preparation

Misc. Logistics

3: Vote process : AMQP1.0 Public Review status

Today is the last day when you can state an interest in voting on this.
We will review the vote text: http://jira.amqp.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=2523359
The important thing is that this is a requirement to be able to have the San Diego public event.

4: Participation

3 companies in flight; one of which is an elevation request
One is ready to advanced to legal if we collectively agree.

5: Public Communications

6: Structured Review of Intellectual Property and process provisions.

Does anyone vote to lead the charge to run a impartial structured review process?
Can the lawyer time be found?
Consensus?

Update on 1-0

RG: No more specific comments
Updates have taken place to document structure

Logistics of F2F

Have 16 non-Working Group members expressed interest in attending
Room has capacity for 60

Action: JOH to form part of the group to determine 2nd day agenda at end of first day

JPMC to sponsor Thursday evening meal

Voting on AMQP 1-0 Draft

PH: Points raised in e-mail still valid - don't want to vote for it at this moment
PH: We need implementations before can be assured of validity
JOH: People need to spend the time to review
PH: Feel we are being obliged to vote yes
JOH: We are following Paul's process
JOH: Work was presented to iMatix in principle in January - there has been plenty of time to review and make comments
PH: We want a text based protocol
JOH: iMatix introduced a binary protocol
MA: We require a binary protocol, not text protocol
JOH: iMatix are not making constructive comments... saying "we want text protocol" is not enough
JOH: have iMatix yet read the specification proposal
PH: Not as of yet
JOH: We have a process. The process was developed in response to the identified need.
People should communicate amongst each other to try to achieve a consensus.

GS: The terms "fundamental change" is in the voting proposal is ambiguous
JOH: Happy to delete bullet point 2 regarding "fundamental change"
PH: That improves the proposal
CT: We need to have WG public consensus that we are working in the right direction before going in front of the public
PH: Deleting point 2 makes iMatix more comfortable

Action: moved to delete point 2 from the proposal

Particpation

(Participation discussions are not publicly minuted)

Action: John will push the participation actions

Public Communications

Patent from RedHat relative to AMQP and XML has come to light

JOH: Disappointed by how we have conducted ourselves in public
We should discuss issues in private before arguing in public
This IMHO is the most disappointing aspect
We should have our discussions inside the PMC and in personal conversations

MB: The publicity is causing us issues and needs to stop
We need to be vendor neutral and interoperable, patents will not help this

JOH: Cannot hold a structured discussion until we have civil communication

AM: Such a public disagreement is very damaging
Strongly agree that communication should be inside PMC

MA: Have their been public comments outside the PMC?

JOH: Individuals have been pouring fuel on the fire

PH: Discussion on PMC list is public

MA: We should announce as a PMC our response.

AR: There have been claims that some bloggers are specifically associated with vendors, Rabbit in particular, this is categorically not the case

JOH: There has been discussion about what protection the agreements provide. The Developer and Participation agreements are not public. Should we make them so?

PH: I would like them to be public

JOH: Contracts are normally confidential - cannot unilaterally make them public

Intellectual Property Issue

JOH Thanks to AR and PH for their proposals, however I think we have all the devices we need already.
How do we define what it is interesting to be patented?

PH In no way is this about not allowing people to patent
Transparency is the way forward
Vendors have no space to put stuff into public place

JOH It would be fantastic if the USPTO had place they recognise prior art

PH Such a thing exists

JOH we need a recognised US PTO place, not just a section of our website

JOH What should people be publishing? What is in AMQP?
What should be in AMQP in the future? We can't define the scope where patents must be disclosed, or prior art established.

AR Anyone can publish anything as prior art

CT Every company has different factors influencing their IP policies
Patents do exist. AMQP agreement provides for patent licnsing
RedHat gone on record to say any patent in their portfolio now or in future they will vote for incoporation if the PMC so desires.
What are the areas around AMQP which we wish to specify as optional to enforce enrigement to provide the patent protection?

AR Any solution has to work for all current and future vendors.
I have proposed a mechanism for prior art
propose formal definition of extensions and such extensions should be covered by agreement

JOH agree with the sentiment... but we already have the tools. The specification is NOT defined as a single document. It is what we define to be.

CT Any process requires that materials coming under the license agreement must be subject to review and voting. Companies need to have the opportunity to raise objections.

AR Don't think the existing words cover everything.

JOH We should examine and determine if we have the necessary tools

MA We are not lawyers - we can't take this too far without legal consultants

JOH It would be difficult to rework legal agreements. Those that we have are very carefully crafted.

MA Should we establish a working group on the AMQP Contract?
Should we have an AMQP Foundation - establish an AMQP legal entity?

JOH We should make time to explore this further next week.

PH We should do some sort of public statement on AMQP and intellectual property

JOH Agree we should create a joint statement

• • • meeting closed 16:09 UTC ***