The New York Times article yesterday, 'Microsoft Quits a U.N. Standards Group, was an interesting read - as has been the aftermath so far.

But who didn't see this coming?

...In an e-mail message sent Monday to two officials of the U.N. standards group, Dave Welsh, a Microsoft program manager, wrote: "Microsoft regularly evaluates its standards participation and its available resources for effective participation. Unfortunately, for now, we have made the decision to stop participating in U.N./Cefact for business reasons and this serves as notification of our immediate withdrawal from all U.N./Cefact activities."

The scoop here is this. Proprietary companies aren't comfortable with handing the United Nations their intellectual property - be it copyright, patent or trademark. Is this wrong? No, it isn't. In fact, it's quite sane. It's the license for their intellectual property that they are really concerned about. After all, Free Software and Open Source contributions.

So the question becomes: What are the intellectual property rights guidelines in effect for U.N./Cefact?

Well - here it is: UN/CEFACT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY POLICY (PDF)

And in Section 4, here it is:

4. Use of Contributions. In connection with each Contribution, the contributing Participant agrees
as follows:

(a) Copyright. The Participant grants UN/CEFACT a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable
royalty-free license under the Participant’s copyright rights in the Contribution to reproduce,
distribute, perform, display and create derivative works of the Contribution, solely for the
purpose of creating, implementing, and promoting Specifications. UN/CEFACT may
sublicense these rights to implementers of Specifications, or otherwise, as necessary to
advance this purpose.

(b) Patents. A Participant agrees that it will grant to any third party implementing a
published final Specification that incorporates a Contribution from such Participant, on
royalty-free and otherwise reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, a non-exclusive, nontransferable,
world-wide license under any Necessary Claim that reads on such Contribution to use, make, have made, import, sell and offer to sell, lease, and otherwise distribute and
dispose of those portions of Specification-compliant products that implement such
Contribution.

(c) Trade secrets. Participants acknowledge that recipients of information disclosed in the
context of a Specification development effort will have no obligation to keep such
information confidential.

Seems pretty FOSSish. Maybe that's why there's a problem.