Fwd: [ORG-discuss] European Commission to exclude Open Source developers with patented standards?

Ben Finney ben at benfinney.id.au
Thu Feb 7 11:31:02 UTC 2008


On 07-Feb-2008, David Gerard wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Glyn Wintle <glynwintle at yahoo.com>
> Date: 7 Feb 2008 10:40
>
> RAND [terms for patent licenses] (such as h264 or MPEG2) are a way 
> to exclude FLOSS developers, because they require royalty payments 
> that developers cannot afford.

The argument of "cannot afford" is unlikely to win too many to our 
side. Fortunately, it's not the strongest argument against such terms.

Worse than "cannot afford" is the fact that these terms usually 
require payment on a per-customer or per-installation or some such 
basis, which is infeasible to comply with for free software simply 
because there is (by design) no limitation on redistribution.

Many such license terms are on such a basis that redistribution is 
explicitly prohibited, clearly excluding free software.

-- 
 \         "Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends."  -- |
  `\                                                  Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney <ben at benfinney.id.au>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20080207/2e3bc0c7/attachment.sig>


More information about the Discussion mailing list