Here in the duldrums of August comes the news (press release) that OGC will be participating in the FOSS4G conference this fall in South Africa and the focus will be on a memorandum of understanding between the two bodies. The details of the MOU are not detailed.

Some (most? all?) OSGeo projects do indeed implement standards (OGC's and other's), though that's not required to be an official OSGeo project. That said, per the release it's pretty important.

The two organizations agree to expand collaboration and promote the synergy between open standards and open source software in the geospatial domain. The OGC, founded in 1994, is the world's leading industry organization for geoprocessing standards used by the world's providers of geoprocessing software. The OSGeo's goal is to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led open source geospatial software projects, most of which depend on open standards like those from the OGC.

OGC, per Carl Reed writing in GeoWorld in 2007 doesn't endorse either open source or proprietary licensing.

The OGC doesn’t care if software are proprietary or open source. Our goal is that OGC standards help make geospatial or location-based content and services ubiquitous—to improve the ability of decision makers to address the many pressing social, environmental and economic issues they face.

What’s important, from the OGC’s point of view, isn’t the purchasing and licensing details of software products, but their adherence to a shared, open, non-proprietary system for communicating geographically.

OSGeo may need to update its FAQ which includes this statement about the relationship:

What is the relationship between OSGeo and OGC?
There is no relationship between OSGeo and OGC. OGC is a organization for creating GIS standards, while OSGeo is an organization for promoting open source GIS work. That said, a number of parties/individuals in OSGeo work with OGC standards, and vice versa. It is also an explicit goal of OSGeo to support and promote standards, including OGC standards.

I saw this yesterday, but needed to find an explanation I understood before writing about. Thankfully, my favorite lawyer on IP issues, Andy Updegrove (I met him when I consulted to OGC and he spoke at Directions Media's Location Intelligence Conference in past years), is interviewed by Computerworld, so now I can explain it!

Here's the case:

Kam Industries used some open source code that allows train folks to program chips in model trains. The code was released un an Artistic License. That's not one I know much about - but it's OSI approved and has a copyright from the PERL Foundation. That license requires users to "give credit to the author, identify the original source of the files and describe how the new code has been changed, among other conditions."

The author of the code, Robert Jacobsen felt Kam Industries violated the terms and violated the software's copyright. A requested injunction to stop Kam from using the software was denied in US District Court. The news this week: the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the ruling.

The big deal: when infringement happens, the infringee (the holder of the license) can argue copyright copyright infringement not just breach of contract. Why's that significant? Now to Mr. Updegrove:

That distinction is important, says Andy Updegrove, an attorney with Gesmer Updegrove LLP in Boston who studies licensing issues. Under contract law, the remedy is monetary damages, which aren't likely to amount to anything involving open-source software that is given away, Updegrove says.

However, statutory damages - money awarded for a violation of law - can be awarded for copyright infringement without requiring proof of monetary damages, Updegrove says. Also, people can recover attorney fees for copyright infringement cases, he says.

"And, most importantly for licences such as the GPL, it means that your rights to use the copyrighted work at all disappear," Updegrove says, referring to the General Public License, widely used for open source software.