Sun, VeriSign, Cape Clear, Nokia among candidates Representatives from several companies, including Sun Microsystems, Cape Clear, and VeriSign, are seeking seats on the policy-making board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I).WS-I on Wednesday announced nominations for election to its board of directors, including the much-anticipated nomination of an executive from Sun.Two directors will be selected from the following nominees: Jorgen Thelin, chief scientist at Cape Clear Software; JuhaniMurto, senior manager of Web services architecture at Nokia; UgoCorda, principal standards analyst at SeeBeyond; Mark Hapner, distinguished engineer and chief Web services strategist at Sun Microsystems; Sundar Krishnamurthy, product manager at VeriSign; and Andy Astor, vice president of enterprise Web Services at webMethods. Elections will take place in mid-March and results will be announced March 28, according to WS-I. Votes will be taken amongst the 166 member organizations, with the top vote-getter awarded a two-year term and the second-place finisher being seated for a one-year term. Board director terms begin on April 1.Sun’s participation in WS-I has been the subject of controversy, with the company initially shut out of WS-I’s IBM- and Microsoft-led formation a year ago. Sun officials said last week that the company plans to use WS-I as a platform for promoting royalty-free Web services specifications, which means any vendor whose technology is submitted and then incorporated into an industry specification could not collect fees for use of that technology.According to the WS-I Web site, current board members include Accenture, BEA Systems, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. The WS-I identifies itself as “an open industry effort chartered to promote Web Services interoperability across platforms, applications, and programming languages. The organization brings together a diverse community of Web services leaders to respond to customer needs by providing guidance, recommended practices, and supporting resources for developing interoperable Web services,” according to the site. Software Development