# Board announcement - openEHR IP License Revision Proposal **Category:** [Announcements (archive)](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/announcements-archive/155) **Created:** 2010-04-15 08:32 UTC **Views:** 1 **Replies:** 1 **URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/board-announcement-openehr-ip-license-revision-proposal/13356 --- ## Post #1 by @thomas.beale A message from the board of the *open*EHR Foundation. --- ## Post #2 by @thomas.beale Practical engagement with *open*EHR continues to grow, apace. Over recent months, the Foundation has begun to address a number of key issues and concerns arising within the wide international community of users of the specifications, as follows: __1. Licensing of the *open*EHR Specifications and Documents__ The licenses governing the Intellectual Property (IP) of the *open*EHR Foundation need to be tidied and modernised. Commercial users wishing to base products upon them have raised this matter with the Board and it is accepted that the position now requires comprehensive simplification and clarification. The Foundation’s intentions in this matter have not changed, fundamentally, at all. [Here](http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+IP+License+Revision+Proposal) is a wiki page setting out the various kinds of IP made available, by and through the Foundation, and the intentions it has in determining the licensing framework for each of them. The existing licenses for all IP types will now be reviewed and where appropriate replaced or modified, using precedents from W3C, Creative Commons, OMG and other organisations. To guide this process, the Foundation will conduct a three-month consultation, with a deadline of June 30th, through the above wiki page, seeking users’ views on draft text for these licenses. Please contribute to this. Legal advice will also be taken on precise wording. In this context, we would like to re-emphasise that it remains Foundation Policy to work towards suitable international governance of all IP in the *open*EHR specifications and to secure the resources needed to sustain and continue the development and free availability of these rigorous and clinically anchored specifications for the EHR, validated through practical implementation experience. **2. Licensing of Archetypes** As previously announced, all archetypes based on the *open*EHR specifications and made available by the Foundation, are now issued free of charge under a Creative Commons license. This is currently the CC-BY-SA license, but the decision is being kept under review as the arrangement begins to settle, in practice. We are seeking to ensure that software developers are not restricted in any way in their use of archetypes or templates distributed by the Foundation, but need also to ensure that templates and schemas based on *open*EHR archetypes are freely available if published. We also have to be realistic, and the Foundation is only one small player in a much wider ongoing process, internationally. Accordingly, we must proceed carefully, aligning our efforts as much as we can with others. As demonstrated by ongoing discussions with IHTSDO and EuroRec, the *open*EHR Board is keen to support international organisations working to create appropriate and effective international governance processes for archetypes, as experience, demand and practical dependencies upon them grow. **3. Licensing of Open source Software** Where the Foundation makes software available open source, it will continue to do so under recognised international licenses, such as the Mozilla tri-license or Apache 2, and will aim for a unified approach to all such licenses, again working in partnership with cognate organisations, internationally, such as Open Health Tools. **4. International Partnerships** Discussions towards implementation of the MOU between *open*EHR and [IHTSDO](http://www.ihtsdo.org/), published last year, are being actively pursued between the two organisations. There is growing recognition of the need for standards governing terminology, information models for health record architecture and content, and messaging between systems to be more clearly and rigorously aligned, in practical terms. As also previously reported, there is close alignment of thinking between the boards of [EuroRec](http://www.eurorec.org/) and *open*EHR , about governance issues arising in quality assurance and accreditation of archetypes for use in Europe, being led by EuroRec. An MOU between *open*EHR and EuroRec is under discussion to capture the intention of the two organisations to collaborate in this area, with Dipak Kalra, who is a member of the Boards of both organisations, taking the lead for the *open*EHR Foundation. David Ingram, Sam Heard and Dipak Kalra, April 8th, 2010 --- **Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/board-announcement-openehr-ip-license-revision-proposal/13356 **Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/board-announcement-openehr-ip-license-revision-proposal/13356