The Open Grid Services Architecture vision for the convergence of Web services and Grid computing received a big boost today when IBM announced that its contributions to the core Grid Services Specification will be royalty-free.
"IBM is pleased to announce that any essential patent claims, held by IBM, that are necessary to implement the 'Grid Services Specification' document submitted to the Global Grid Forum, will be licensed on a royalty-free basis," IBM Grid Computing General Manager Tom Hawk wrote in a letter to Charlie Catlett, chair of the standard-setting Global Grid Forum.
"The 'Grid Services Specification' is built upon both Grid and Web Services technologies, referred to as the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA)," Hawk wrote. "Like Web Services and XML before it, this foundational Grid work will be an essential part of the Web and network infrastructure for businesses, as well as for governments and scientific institutions."
OGSA began as a joint effort between IBM and the Globus Project - the team that created the open source Globus Toolkit, the de-facto Grid computing standard - but has since expanded to become a broader Global Grid Forum effort. The issue of the status of OGSA intellectual property has been a growing concern within the Grid Forum. Sun Microsystems, for example, has kept its position on OGSA vague because of the lack of a clear position from IBM on IP issues.
In a statement in response to the IBM announcement, Sun said, "Sun has been - and will continue to be - committed to royalty-free development of grid standards. All of Sun's current and future contributions to the DRMAA and OGSI working groups, among others, are provided on a royalty-free basis as we work to ensure that Grid computing has maximum adoption at the lowest cost for all users. This is a positive and long-overdue
announcement from IBM. More work needs to be done to ensure that OGSI, and other
standards on which it depends, will be completely RF."
Ian Foster of Argonne National Laboratory, co-leader of the Globus Project, forwarded Hawk's letter to the Forum's OGSA working groups.
"I know that many people have been concerned about the IP status of OGSA, and have argued (as have I) that a royalty-free (RF) licensing approach was essential for its broad success," Foster said.
"I can add to this that ANL and USC/ISI [Argonne and USC's Information Sciences Institute, founders of the Globus Project], as the home institutions of other co-authors on the Grid Service Specification, have committed to not asserting patents on its technologies," Foster said. "Thus, as far as the Grid Service Specification authors are concerned, there are no IP impediments to the use of the technology. I hope that this very positive statement spurs RF commitments from other GGF participants."
IBM's announcement comes on the eve of a Grid Forum meeting in Chicago that is expected to move the core Grid Service Specification closer to completion.
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