[From nobody Tue Apr 29 12:48:22 2008 Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 18:05:30 -0400 From: Janina Sajka <janina@a11y.org> To: Rob Sinclair <robsi@windows.microsoft.com> Cc: "'janina@freestandards.org'" <janina@linux-foundation.org>, "claudio@qualilife.com" <claudio@qualilife.com>, Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com> Subject: Re: Our Teleconference Tuesday, 4 March Message-ID: <20080407220530.GH16407@rednote.net> References: <14636E983DBC96408C4D669AFA9B86C0335EFE1AC9@NA-EXMSG-W602.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com> <0C3CD14D602A1B4A8787E6A4B4418073374FC7AF37@NA-EXMSG-W602.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <0C3CD14D602A1B4A8787E6A4B4418073374FC7AF37@NA-EXMSG-W602.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com> X-Operating-System: Linux opera.rednote.net 2.6.23.15-80.spk.fc7 Organization: Capital Accessibility LLC (http://www.CapitalAccessibility.com) X-PGP-Key: http://www.CapitalAccessibility.com/JaninaSajka_gpg_key.html User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17 (2007-11-01) Dear Rob: Thank you for your email, and please accept my apologies for my very slow response. I also enjoyed meeting you in person at CSUN. It's always a joy to have an opportunity to interact in person when most contacts are electronic. In that regard let me also add that I will be in the Seattle area during the week of June 23 for a WAI face to face working session, in case that might be of use to us. As you probably know, the WAI/PF Wg is being hosted by Microsoft--I don't yet know where. I am hopeful that we can continue toward an operational consensus that will work for AIA and for Open A11y, but I also catch your concern that LF can move IAccessible2 to ISO. I do appreciate this would create problems for Microsoft and AIA. As you have seen from our meetings at CSUN, IAccessible2 is an open accessibility specification which has garnered enormous industry support from both AT and application vendors. Making it an ISO standard would further encourage adoption of the working specification that's delivering much needed support to disabled users today. As I think you've also seen in our several teleconferences, we do believe that a common API is in the best interest of both end users and industry--and we reaffirm our desire to continue working with you toward an understanding which can enable us all to proceed toward such a consensus API.. But we simply can't sacrifice the principles by which Open A11y operates to get there. I think we would all freely acknowledge that you have come a long way toward meeting our bottom-line IP concerns. I think it especially important to note this inasmuch as I also need to point out the consensus on our side that more is still required. In simple terms, I would summarize the issues as: * Royalty free without IP restrictions * True open community governance and participation While I, unfortunately, cannot yet point you to a web page that explains LF's IP policy cohesively, it is clear from the types of licenses adopted for LSB (GPL/LGPL, Artistic, Etc.), and from Open A11y members' publicly voiced concerns about patent policies, that we're not yet in sync on these all important issues. Hopefully, we will get there. * Currently, AIA has a steering committee (we do not have one) which was * apparently elected by Microsoft and not by the AIA's members. We need * to know that AIA is, in fact, a consensus community process * organization. * While we both claim to be royalty free, AIA provides assert clauses * for IP and we do not. Our members, including Sun, IBM, and KDE, have issues with this in that AIA would require implementers to follow a set of minimum requirements to use aspects of the API. This may be problematic for some developers trying to migrate and appears to diverge from licensing terms typically employed by our members. I also looked at your web site and found another issue. Your website does not indicate that you plan to move all platforms toward a converged API supporting all platforms - just a plan for coexistence. We would need to see these issues addressed and see the AIA members agree to these methods of operation. This would make the case much stronger for putting the breaks on a move toward ISO to both our members and the Linux Foundation board. Finally, if you were to make these changes how would this result in changes you have in your existing agreement with AIA members? If we should discuss these points further in teleconference, may I suggest using an Open A11y teleconference either on April 22 or 29. Meanwhile, please let me know your thoughts on this and on how we might proceed. Janina Rob Sinclair writes: > Hello Janina. > > It was great to meet you in person last Friday at CSUN. > > I would like to find some time to follow-up with you regarding next steps after our group call with the Open Accessibility (Open Ally) subgroup. As a result of the feedback we have received from your group and the industry at large, the AIA is reviewing its website to ensure its charter is understood to be multi-platform and accepting of companies or organizations of either business model: open source or proprietary code development. Each of the working groups is also editing their purpose statement to clarify the purpose of their work. I believe you were going to send us information about the Linux Foundation's IP policy? > > There will be great interest from members of the AIA in having some official way to collaborate with the Open Ally subgroup since we share the common goal of solving these AT and IT interoperability problems - and since we have some overlap in our membership. In particular, based on the comments in last Friday's CSUN panel discussion on IAccessible2, it seems clear many companies are interested in seeing IAccessible2 and UI Automation on a path for convergence. For this reason, I would like to add another topic to our list of follow-up items - and that is the Open Ally's consideration of taking IAccessible2 to ISO. > > I would like to understand the group's thinking here because I believe that could greatly complicate our efforts to bring these APIs together. Once a specification becomes an ISO standard, it becomes much harder to change. The consensus of AT & IT companies right now is that they want to see further consolidation of APIs on Windows - along with good integration and/or mapping to other platforms' APIs like Linux and Mac OSX. In practice, this is likely to require changes to each of the existing APIs. > > By the way, I have copied the other members of the AIA steering committee on this mail to include them in this conversation and keep everyone in the loop. > > Best regards, > Rob > _________________________________________________________________ > Robert Sinclair > Steering Committee, Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA) > Director of Accessibility, Microsoft Corporation > office: +1.425.703.8473 | mobile: +1.425.765.1299 | email: robsi@microsoft.com > www.microsoft.com/enable > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Janina Sajka [mailto:janina@a11y.org] > Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 12:20 PM > To: Rob Sinclair > Cc: Janina Sajka; Andrew Kirkpatrick; Claudio Giugliemma - QualiLife; Calvin Gaisford; Laura Ruby; Norm Hodne > Subject: Re: Our Teleconference Tuesday, 4 March > > I wanted to apprise you of our practice of audio recording our Open A11y > telecons in advance. In case I haven't mentioned it previously, I didn't > want to blind-side you on the call. > > It's acceptable to object, of course. In that case there would be no > recording. > > The purpose is to allow people, especially any who may miss the call, to > follow our deliberations. > > There is light security on the audio recordings. They're housed at > http://rednote.net/a11y, which requires login and password. We use > 'a11y' for the login and the teleconference passcode as our web site > password. > > Let me know if this is a problem, and we won't do it. I will mention > this at the beginning of the call as well. > > Looking forward to our conversation, > > Janina > > -- > > Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.202.595.7777; sip:janina@a11y.org > Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC http://CapitalAccessibility.Com > > Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada > Learn more at http://ScreenlessPhone.Com > > Chair, Open Accessibility janina@a11y.org > Linux Foundation http://a11y.org -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.202.595.7777; sip:janina@a11y.org Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC http://CapitalAccessibility.Com Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada Learn more at http://ScreenlessPhone.Com Chair, Open Accessibility janina@a11y.org Linux Foundation http://a11y.org ]