OASIS (organization)
open standards, OASIS has a patent disclosure policy requiring participants to disclose intent to apply for software patents for technologies under consideration in the standard. While the W3C requires participants to offer royalty-free licenses to anyone using the resulting standard, OASIS asks only for open source implementations. Further, contributors could initially offer royalty-free use of their patent, later imposing per-unit fees, after the standard becomes accepted.
Supporters of OASIS point out this could occur anyway since an agreement would not be binding on non-participants, discouraging contributions from potential participants. Supporters further argue that IBM and Microsoft shifting standardization efforts from the W3C to OASIS is evidence this is already occurring.
See Also: World Wide Web Consortium
