Good day, OASIS

ZDNet's David Berlind observed a change at the helm of OASIS. Namely, Sun's Eduardo Gutentag has replaced HP's Jim Hughes as chairman of the board of OASIS.

OASIS has been embroiled in controversy as of late, because its patent policy permits participating vendors to hold an unusual amount of control over standards created under the aegis of OASIS. 

As David puts it, "Gutentag is widely regarded as one of the shakers and movers at the World Wide Web Consortium that was involved in that organization's adoption of a royalty-free (RF) patent policy in 2003.  As a member of OASIS' intellectual property committee, Gutentag's ascension to the chairman's job could signal how serious OASIS is taking the charges that were levied against the organization earlier this year when a group of people that reads like the who's who of the open source community called for a boycott of the consortium because of a recently adopted (and controversial) patent policy."