From: "Darryl Champagne" <Darryl.Champagne@o...> Date: Thu Jul 17, 2003 10:06 am Subject: RE: [SyncML] SyncML in the Free Software community

I think that might be grossly oversimplifying the issue.

ANY standard could be found to have patent issues. The various organizations do their best to assure that no one working on the standard tries to insert something that requires a patent to be licenses, but there is nothing stopping anyone else from getting a patent on relevant technology. You just hope anyone working in the area joins the standards group, and agrees to follow the rules.

Peter can provide more details, but I thought the Starfish patent was relatively specific to exchanging device information, and doing something based on that. SyncML or not, the patent still applies (IF it applies...). However, I thought there were ways to work around the patent, such as having hard-wired configurations (so you don't actually look at device info).

However, your initial use, as a storage format that seems pretty weird - since SyncML just stores the data of other types (like vCard,vCal, etc) anyway.... It's a client/server protocol - I don't see how it would make sense to use it as a meta storage format. It would be interesting to hear what you were thinking of doing....

dgc

-----Original Message----- From: David A. Desrosiers [mailto:hacker@gnu-designs.com] Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 12:14 PM To: SyncML@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [SyncML] SyncML in the Free Software community

> So if you want to use SyncML inside a project, it is currently free - > other than the charges for belonging to OMA (needed to do testing).

The fact that it might change in the future makes it unusable.

Thanks for your explanation.

I will seek the use of other standards instead.

-- PieterHartsook - 21 Nov 2003