[amsat-bb] AMSAT IP

[Michelle Thompson]

I'm so glad you asked about this.

I will outline the steps that several teams of people have taken over time
to identify and explain risk, get buy-in, and proactively do things to get
people trained up and manage multiple issues.

Phil Karn, Bruce Perens, Robert McGwier, and many others, have brought up
IP and ITAR/EAR risk management strategies, primarily Open Source, to the
board, at Symposium, and in public, for over a decade. They have spoken at
conferences, held workshops, written emails, and pointed out that specific
failures would have been prevented with something more than "Um, I guess
hide it because ITAR".

I put together a team to propose a specific IT product to comply with a
specific set of ITAR/EAR implementation guidelines. We wrote a presentation
and submitted it to the board in late 2017.

You can read it here:
https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/blob/master/Papers_Articles_Presentations/Slide_Presentations/20171208_GitHubEnterpriseProposal.pdf

Six highly qualified people signed the proposal, there was enthusiasm from
rank and file engineers, and surely we would get to call in to a board
meeting, answer questions, or record a video presentation.

Well, months went by. I asked about it. Joe Spier said there had already
been a vote. Total rejection, just too expensive, unnecessary.

The cost of GitHub Enterprise for AMSAT comes in a bit less than the cost
of the Wild Apricot subscription for our online member portal. I don't
think it's too expensive to dramatically reduce liability and personal risk
to volunteers, but the board apparently unanimously disagreed.

Later on, though, this vote didn't appear in the minutes. I started to
doubt it ever really happened.

When I asked about whether the vote really happened, I was taunted for
"never even having bothered to run for the board".

Ok, so I guess I have to run for the board to get quality policy work
considered. I did, I won, and the new contract and retainer for FD
Associates to review an actual honest to God ITAR/EAR *policy* has been
*sitting on Clayton's desk for weeks*. Clayton designated me as the person
to get this done and defended me against angry howls of protest from some
long-timers on the board.

Good news? I have almost all of this work done. I want FD Associates to
review it and advise. Clayton, send the contract and retainer back to FD
Associates.

If we don't use our qualified volunteers, unless they're on the board, that
makes for very very slow progress on, well, anything.

Bill Reed submitted his name for consideration as AMSAT President in 2019
with one plank in his platform. "Produce a written ITAR/EAR policy for
AMSAT within three months. If I fail, I resign." This policy would include
the public domain carve-out from ITAR 120.11.

I nominated Bill Reed when Joe Spier resigned. I circulated his resume,
with involvement from early missions up to GOLF, and explained why I
thought he'd be successful and bridge some divides.

He lost 3-4, to Clayton Coleman, who was a Secretary and Director for the
preceding term.

Jan King came to the 2019 Symposium. He spoke to the board, was a dinner
speaker, and had a speaking slot. He stood up in front of the entire
organization and said he regretted not going open source. It steered AMSAT
wrong. He said it was a mistake, and we shouldn't be making it again going
forward. I nearly fell out of my seat. He spoke more pointedly to the
board, echoing almost word for word things that many of us have been saying
for years.

Jan King departed the ASCENT team when Jerry Buxton affirmed that it was
going to be proprietary ITAR. Repeated attempts to get him to come back
didn't work. Bill Tynan brought it up over and over.

It's unfair to speak for him, but I think maybe you can add Jan King to the
list of people that have tried very hard to change the direction of the
organization and are now doing other things with their time rather than
work under FUD.

No action was taken after hearing from Jan King at Symposium.

I was invited to lead the open source ground station team for AMSAT in
2015. We brought in $300,000 of in-kind and cash donations, quickly built
up 40 engineers, and started producing open source work for "five and
dime". I presented the work, promoted the team, they did amazing, lots of
articles were written, several significant donations of IP came in, and we
started getting traction. This was very openly Open Source. In early 2018,
Joe Spier called me to insist that "working in 10GHz as open source is
illegal". I said no, it wasn't, and we would not be going to go closed
source, because that meant complying with commercial or proprietary ITAR
rules, and 25% of our team would vanish and the costs to comply would take
our entire technical budget.

Joe Spier didn't say much to this, but he did shut down this project
without communication or warning while I was on vacation in March 2018. He
claimed to others that he deleted the entire email archive, and I was told
AMSAT would keep all the donations.

Fortunately none of the work was lost and continues today. It did take a
team to set up an entirely new corporate structure and file for a 501c3 and
get solid policies written to properly protect the volunteers that AMSAT
dumped on the floor. I could have used the time and energy for AMSAT. I was
all in. And still am, despite being treated like garbage by people that
don't know ITAR from IZOD.

I think it's clear that the work is appreciated and desired in the
community. It's offered back to AMSAT without strings attached or any hard
feelings.

One big piece of work done for AMSAT's benefit is the filing of a Commodity
Jurisdiction request to the State Department to free open source microwave
band digital payload work from ITAR. This was filed February 2020. It's
working its way through the system now.

AMSAT has never done this. They really should have, years ago.

AMSAT was asked, repeatedly, to join this effort. By paper letter, by
appeal at Symposium, by open letter on the web, and by personal appeals to
whoever would listen. AMSAT completely ignored this effort. However, they
are the single greatest beneficiary of any result that comes from it.
Negative means an appeal, but that AMSAT has to actually implement ITAR
policies. Hence the work with FD Associates.

Positive means huge relief. Somewhere in between, plenty good there too.

Yes, the incumbents, running yet again for another term, ignored this
effort completely. But, the team I recruited still got it done.

As hard as I and many others have worked to bring the completely
world-changing practice of open source engineering to AMSAT, which would
quite bluntly save the day, my question to you is this.

Is the current leadership team really valuable to AMSAT?

How many more years would you like all of us to be ignored, excluded, and
attacked when we "ask nicely"?

-Michelle W5NYV


On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 22:06 Scott McDonald <ka9p at aol.com> wrote:

> Michelle, I understand your points.
>
> But the solution in real life is rarely to toss out the existing team.
> You might get a manager fired, but the team is too valuable.
>
> If you see something, say something.  So far so good.  But then identify
> and explain the risk, get buy-in and proactively do something to get
> everyone trained to respect and manage the issue.
>
> In my experience re-elected board members tend to find a way to make good
> things happen, even against the odds.
>
> Scott Ka9p
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jul 14, 2020, at 11:15 PM, Michelle Thompson <
> mountain.michelle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 
> Since we are talking about IP, let me turn your attention to some actual
> problems with intellectual property management at AMSAT.
>
> For example, an entire custom set of HDL cores, donated to AMSAT by
> Comtech/AHA, was lost. The NDA was neglected and literally lost until I
> brought it up. I insisted Joe Spier go find it for the 2019 annual meeting.
>
> Worse, the license for the community accessible version with GNU Radio
> simply not managed. That community totally lost out on something that was
> supposed to come to them through this work.
>
> This entire block of IP was simply squandered. Did someone end up with it
> that should not have? Because it helps digital modes, was it just
> gobblygook to engineering leadership?
>
> If we can't manage this type of data, then how do you think we are doing
> managing more important things with harsher repercussions?
>
> Unlike files that describe a toy plastic model, this was advanced error
> correcting and control code, designed for space applications, that actually
> put us well ahead of many chip manufacturers at the time.
>
> If you want this sort of waste to change, then please vote for Howie
> DeFelice, Jeff Johns, and Robert McGwier.
>
> Why? Because the incumbents blindly support the officers that lost this
> IP, and will simply re-appoint all of those officers if they win.
>
> AMSAT got this gift, primarily because of Robert McGwier. One of his
> students spent the summer doing the work with AHA mentoring him.
>
> Howie DeFelice works in the commercial satellite world and would simply
> never let valuable IP walk out the door or fall on the floor.
>
> Jeff Johns is a trained consultant in quality and accountability systems.
> People like him annoy the tar out of me at work because I can't get away
> with flushing IP down a toilet or giving it to my friends in violation of
> an NDA.
>
> Yes, I'm headstrong. But I'm not stupid. Problems like this are what we
> should be caring about and voting on, instead of plastic toys.
>
> -Michelle W5NYV
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 8:51 PM Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 8:18 PM Scott McDonald via AMSAT-BB <
>> amsat-bb at amsat.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Bruce-
>>> As a member I have to take exception to most of your note.
>>> 1) To oversimplify, non-standard original shapes much like the satellite
>>> model often are considered copyrightable, and the copyright vests in the
>>> creator when the work is created. Notice and registration have much to do
>>> with the right to sue and collect damages, among other things, but have
>>> nothing to do with the copyright vesting in the creator.
>>>
>>
>> Actually, I would think that the shapes are more the topic of design
>> patent. The case law around this applies to 2D fonts: the font file can be
>> copyrighted, but if one renders the font and traces the outline, that is
>> _not_ protected by copyright. The law has not entirely followed this for 3D
>> shapes, but in part that is because we don't have enough good cases about
>> them yet.
>>
>> And then we have the matter of the *function* of the particular shape.
>> The overall cubesat shape is constrained by a standard and thus functional
>> rather than expressive and not copyright protectible. Something like a
>> parabolic antenna would be constrained by phyiscal law and thus again
>> functional rather than expressive and not copyright protectible.
>>
>> Of course I'd love to write an expert report on this topic or help an
>> attorney argue all of this in court.
>>
>>
>>> 2) In my experience, it is a rare organization that would be happy with
>>> a director having an informal discussion with "enough" other directors and
>>> then releasing its intellectual property.
>>
>>
>> Is this about Michelle and the model? I am not going to argue that she
>> isn't headstrong, etc. It may be the kind of headstrong we need. There is
>> about 50 years of inertia to overcome.
>>
>>
>>> 3) Your opinion that AMSAT shouldn't pursue patents dumbfounds me.
>>
>>
>> Wow! No, I am going to stand by that one. First, AMSAT as a public
>> benefit non-profit should not be standing in the way of other people's
>> research and work. Second, if it does so, it will be subject to companies
>> bringing their patent portfolios to bear against AMSAT, which would
>> entirely hobble AMSAT's ability to build and launch satellites. Every
>> software program and I am sure everything as complex as a cubesat practices
>> a patent claim that is currently in force if never litigated. What we have
>> right now is a sort of tacit detante, which is the best we can do within
>> current law. This is a topic I have explored thoroughly for Open Source
>> projects. Start to issue patents to AMSAT, and we will be on the radar of
>> very many companies with larger portfolios than ours.
>>
>> The only workable strategy would be a purely defensive portfolio, and I
>> can't see that it's worth the cost.
>>
>> If AMSAT creates something that is commercially significant in the
>>> satellite field, protectable by any form of IP, that invention should not
>>> be disclosed to others until an informed decision is made as to its
>>> potential value.  If there is a good business case for protecting the
>>> asset, that should be done.  I expect there are enough members that could
>>> do this work pro bono, if the work could actually provide AMSAT with
>>> licensing income or leverage for collaboration opportunities.
>>>
>>
>> The problem with all of this is that AMSAT has to bring lawsuits to
>> enforce its patents, and threaten to do so before anyone else would even
>> consider paying for a patent. A patent is simply a license to sue.
>> Meanwhile, we have to be 1000 times more careful to search patents about
>> everything in our satellites. No thank you.
>>
>> I expect many AMSAT volunteers already know this from their work
>>> elsewhere, but figured it was worth mentioning, as its seems some folks may
>>> not.
>>
>>
>> I am sure that many people know something of the patent policy of their
>> companies. Most probably don't understand it fully. But that doesn't apply
>> to a public benefit non-profit, for sensible strategic reasons. This is one
>> of those areas where a corporate attorney could give us the entirely wrong
>> advice.
>>
>>     Thanks
>>
>>     Bruce
>>
>