[school-discuss] SIF - A second glance

[Justin Zeigler <jzeigler@osef.org>]

I went digging through the sifinfo.org web-site(1) and found out 
some very alarming info. First off SIF is a sub-group of SIIA(2). 
SIIA is a Trade Association with 1200+ members with a focus of
"expanding market opportunities and forging the way toward a 
stronger industry". On top of this their Mission Statement(3) 
states the following: "we protect the intellectual property of 
members, and advocate a legal and regulatory environment that 
benefits the entire industry".  From my point of view this is 
diametrically opposed to the goals of Open Source, if anything,
Open Source is about removing legal and regulatory environments.

Looking through the member list(4) of SIF, I noticed that there 
is a disconcerting amount of members who have gone to extreme 
ends to protect "intellectual property" (i.e; McGraw-Hill(5)).
This concerns me because it is not uncommon for a Standard to 
be hi-jacked by covert patents and copyrights (i.e; MPEG layer
3 audio and Fraunhofer/Thompson).
 
I would suggest a very serious discussion as to whether or not 
SIF is a Project/Standard/Group with which  Schoolforge should 
encourage participation.  There are some serious holes in the 
recommendations(session handling), that may be fatal in the
Open Source community's ability to inter-operate with other,
proprietary, SIF products.  I put forward the idea that this
list and its members consider creating a true standard for 
schools to use for inter-system communication/coordination.

(1)http://www.sifinfo.org
(2)http://www.siia.net
(3)http://www.siia.net/glance/default.asp
(4)http://www.sifinfo.org/members.html
(5)http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011102/22182_1.html

-- 
Justin Zeigler <jzeigler@osef.org>
Open Source Education Foundation

My mind is like a rusty trap, you never know when, or if, it is
going to go off, and your likely to get tetanus when it does.-- 
Justin Zeigler <jzeigler@osef.org>
Open Source Education Foundation

My mind is like a rusty trap, you never know when, or if, it is
going to go off, and your likely to get tetanus when it does.