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W3C Patent Board Recommends Royalty-Free Policy
Bruce Perens writes "A year ago, the World Wide Web Consortium proposed a policy to allow royalty-generating
patents to be embedded in web standards. This would have been fatal to the
ability of Free Software to implement those standards. There was much protest,
including over 2000 emails to the W3C Patent Policy Board spurred on by a
call
to arms published on Slashdot. As a result of the complaints, I was invited
to join W3C's patent policy board, representing Software in the Public Interest
(Debian's corporation) -- but really the entire Free Software community. I was later joined in this by Eben Moglen, for FSF,
and Larry Rosen, for the Open Source Initiative." Bruce has written more below - it's well worth reading.
After a year of argument and see-sawing, W3C's patent policy board has
voted to recommend a royalty-free patent policy. This recommendation
will be put in the form of a draft and released for public comment. There
will probably be a dissenting minority report from some of the large patent
holders. Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C Advisory Committee, composed of representatives
from all of the consortium's members, will eventually make the final decision
on the policy. My previous interaction with the Advisory Committee and Berners-Lee
lead me to feel that they will approve the royalty-free policy.
The policy will require working group members to make a committment to royalty-free license essential claims - those which you can not help infringing if you are to implement the standard at all. There is also language prohibiting discriminatory patent licenses. The royalty-free grant is limited to the purpose of implementing the standard, and does not extend to any other application of the patent. And there is a requirement to disclose whether any patent used, even a non-essential one, is available under royalty-free terms, so that troublesome patents can be written out of a standard. The limitation of the scope-of-use on patents, and some other aspects of the policy, are less than I would like but all that I believed we could reasonably get. Eben Moglen may have some discussion regarding how GPL developers should cope with scope-of-use-limited patent grants from other parties. For now, it should suffice to say that while this is less than desirable, is will not block GPL development.
I'm not allowed to disclose how individual members voted, but I'll note that the vote did not follow "friends-vs-enemies" lines that the more naive among us might expect - so don't make assumptions.
Now, we must take this fight elsewhere. Although IETF has customarily been held up as the paragon of openness, they currently allow royalty-bearing patents to be embedded in their standards. This must change, and IETF has just initiated a policy discussion to that effect. We must pursue similar policies at many other standards bodies, and at the governments and treaty organizations that persist in writing bad law.
For me, this process has included two trips to France (no fun if you have to work every day) and an appearance at a research meeting in Washington, a week in Cupertino, innumerable conference calls and emails, and upcoming meetings in New York and Boston. That's a lot of time away from my family. Larry Rosen has shouldered a similar burden while nobody has been paying him for his time and trouble, and Eben Moglen put in a lot of time as well. Much of the time was spent listening to royalty-bearing proposals being worked out in excrutiating detail, which fortunately did not carry in the final vote. We also had help from a number of people behind the scenes, notably John Gilmore, and the officers and members of the organizations we represent.
I'd like to give credit to HP. Because I was representing SPI, and HP had someone else representing them at W3C, I made it clear to my HP managers that they would not be allowed to influence my role at W3C - that would have created a conflict-of-interest for me, as well as giving HP unfair double-representation. HP managers understood this, and were supportive. During all but the very end of the process, HP paid my salary and travel expenses while they knew that I was functioning as an independent agent who would explicitly reject their orders. Indeed, HP allowed me to influence their policy, rather than the reverse. This was the result of enlightened leadership by Jim Bell, Scott K. Peterson, Martin Fink, and Scott Stallard.
For most of the existence of Free Software, technology has been of primary importance. It will remain so, but the past several years have seen the emergence of the critical supporting role of political involvement simply so that we can continue to have the right to use and develop Free Software. I do not believe that we will consistently be able to code around bad law - we must represent what is important about our work and involve ourselves in policy-making worldwide, or what we do will not survive. I hope to continue to serve the Free Software Community in this role.
Respectfully Submitted
Bruce Perens
"
The policy will require working group members to make a committment to royalty-free license essential claims - those which you can not help infringing if you are to implement the standard at all. There is also language prohibiting discriminatory patent licenses. The royalty-free grant is limited to the purpose of implementing the standard, and does not extend to any other application of the patent. And there is a requirement to disclose whether any patent used, even a non-essential one, is available under royalty-free terms, so that troublesome patents can be written out of a standard. The limitation of the scope-of-use on patents, and some other aspects of the policy, are less than I would like but all that I believed we could reasonably get. Eben Moglen may have some discussion regarding how GPL developers should cope with scope-of-use-limited patent grants from other parties. For now, it should suffice to say that while this is less than desirable, is will not block GPL development.
I'm not allowed to disclose how individual members voted, but I'll note that the vote did not follow "friends-vs-enemies" lines that the more naive among us might expect - so don't make assumptions.
Now, we must take this fight elsewhere. Although IETF has customarily been held up as the paragon of openness, they currently allow royalty-bearing patents to be embedded in their standards. This must change, and IETF has just initiated a policy discussion to that effect. We must pursue similar policies at many other standards bodies, and at the governments and treaty organizations that persist in writing bad law.
For me, this process has included two trips to France (no fun if you have to work every day) and an appearance at a research meeting in Washington, a week in Cupertino, innumerable conference calls and emails, and upcoming meetings in New York and Boston. That's a lot of time away from my family. Larry Rosen has shouldered a similar burden while nobody has been paying him for his time and trouble, and Eben Moglen put in a lot of time as well. Much of the time was spent listening to royalty-bearing proposals being worked out in excrutiating detail, which fortunately did not carry in the final vote. We also had help from a number of people behind the scenes, notably John Gilmore, and the officers and members of the organizations we represent.
I'd like to give credit to HP. Because I was representing SPI, and HP had someone else representing them at W3C, I made it clear to my HP managers that they would not be allowed to influence my role at W3C - that would have created a conflict-of-interest for me, as well as giving HP unfair double-representation. HP managers understood this, and were supportive. During all but the very end of the process, HP paid my salary and travel expenses while they knew that I was functioning as an independent agent who would explicitly reject their orders. Indeed, HP allowed me to influence their policy, rather than the reverse. This was the result of enlightened leadership by Jim Bell, Scott K. Peterson, Martin Fink, and Scott Stallard.
For most of the existence of Free Software, technology has been of primary importance. It will remain so, but the past several years have seen the emergence of the critical supporting role of political involvement simply so that we can continue to have the right to use and develop Free Software. I do not believe that we will consistently be able to code around bad law - we must represent what is important about our work and involve ourselves in policy-making worldwide, or what we do will not survive. I hope to continue to serve the Free Software Community in this role.
Respectfully Submitted
Bruce Perens
"
Gotta be the largest front-page posting I've ever seen.
Am I the only one seeing this on the front page in its entirety?
Really freaking me out.
Wow.... I remember when the "Read More" option was used to truncate a lot of posts like this.
Would it hurt us to give a brief description of the article so it doesn't become so painful on my poor little 13" VGA monitor?
Karma: Non-Heinous
At least it have its own place in the front page
/. can no longer use the "Read More" option due to a royalty-generating patent.
McCall
... the W3C has been a group without any kind of power for a long time. They've been suggesting technical web standard since the Web began, but they've been largely ignored for at least the past 3-4 years. I doubt that this recommendation will be any more than that, a recommendation. I really don't think that anybody of importance (in this case, the US patent office) really pays them much attention any more. Hard to hear, but that's reality.
It interesting to see mature responses to differences of opinions with your employers. Other recent high profile employer/employee splits *cough*bero*cough* showed a real lack of maturity.
Perens is a model of how to influence people to your point of view, and it sure doesn't involve leaving in a hissy fit when your companies views diverge from your views.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Now if only I could get this ancient HPLJ to work under Red Hat!
Oh wait, HP likes linux.
Oh wait, HP doesn't support their hardware under linux.
Oh wait, HP likes linux.
Oh wait, HP likes Microsoft.
Oh wait, HP lindof likes Linux again (really? Yeah right.)
They wouldn't be diverting your with 'important things that can't cange anyhow' would they? No, not HP.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Finally, a way to get prople to read the article before posting!
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
-- Cicero
First: Great news! Next: Record setting front page post size! Double positive!
This post will be modded down for no particular reason by a sweaty 14 year old who is not allowed out past dark.
.... for a second I thought Jon Katz was back.
Did Bruce say "Free Software Community"?
There's still hope that he'll join the light of Free Software rather than the slightly off white of Open Source.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
The interesting bit about the licence this this patent is that it uses patent law to enforce openness in the same way that the GPL uses copyright law to enforce openness. Effectively the licence to the patent says something like:"if you use technology protected under this patent then enhancements must be handed over to W3C". Obviously many people see this as anti-microsoft's embrace-extend-extinguish policy. (See http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=985) for more.
More interestingly I had a chance to ask RMS if he thought using patent law to enforce openness was a good thing, and his answer was words to the effect of - "well it might be but we've never had the money to patent the things we've invented"
So whilst we are all cheering this decision (and in general I think it is a good decision), there are implications of this that are not obvious.
Does anyone know if Sun's policy has/will change on this?
DWR is Ajax for Java
First:
This is the largest front page post I've ever seen...
Second:
HDTV has the Dolby AC-3 technology in the standard. That means Dolby will get a cut off of every TV with a built in digital tuner and every HDTV tuner box. It also means royalties on many broadcast tools. I don't know the license regulations, but it may also mean a cut on every show that uses AC-3. Sucky, but also, time to buy Dolby stock.
Just imagine if the web had turned out this way. Companies keep trying to move things into their corner, even without standards bodies helping. What is Quicktime became the video standard on the web? I love the format, but it's also been hell getting Linux to support it. The web has been burned this way before. Everything will be okay, as long as we burn back.
This would have been fatal to the ability of Free Software to implement those standards.
/.).
Sounds like a problem with Free Software's outdated business model (to use a phrase bandied about every day here on
I have been waiting long for this, and I'm glad it didn't turn out the other way round.
Those who were involved in the outcry would recall the proposal for RAND [non-free] standards was done in a rather suspicious manner. There was no announcement on the W3C's front page [I visit it regularly] but a proposal for RAND was quietly drafted, a ludicrously short deadline for feedback set and a mailing list for the same created. Why, then, is it suprising that only thirteen posts were recorded until a week before the initial deadline, ten of them spam?
Then the story broke [on The Register, IIRC] and the mails flooded in. And what a flood it was *smiles* - 755 in Sept and 1686 in Oct. My mailbox was getting a good beating.
Many voiced their opinions strongly, and with an exception or two [one of which was obvious astroturfing], they were all soundly against the inclusion of non-free patents in W3C standards [check out the archives and spot the famous names]. Under this tremendous pressure, the W3C had little alternative but to extend the deadline. I am sure certain * ahem * special interest groups were disappointed - but hey, it's for the best. Really.
And now we have this. Brilliant. Common sense and justice have won this round.
Special thanks to Bruce Perens, Daniel Phillips, Adam Warner and Gervase Markham for their dedication to this cause.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
And thanks for all your hard work on this.
Carousel is a lie!
So as long as the patent is royalty free then there should be no problem.
Unless the patent gets sold to somebody who terminates the royalty-free license (Forgent anyone?)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Or the equivalent of a short newspaper article or op-ed piece (not even a Sunday supplement article). A reading speed of about 250-300 words per minute is typical of the general population, so we're talking about less than three minutes -- or less than the length of a TV commercial break, if that's a more familiar benchmark for you.
If you can't spare three minutes on a reasonably well written first person account of such an important issue, then you have to ask -- who is telling you what to think on this topic?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Now if only I could get this ancient HPLJ to work under Red Hat!
HP LaserJets (any vintage) have to be one of the most Linux-friendly hardware devices on the planet. I've personally had LaserJet II/III/4V/4MV/5P/6Ls hooked up to Linux at one point or another, in both parallel and JetDirect setups.
What, specifically is your problem? There has to be something simple that you've overlooked.
For me, this process has included two trips to France (no fun if you have to work every day)
Let's be honest, trips to France are no fun, period.
Could it not be made a (contractual) requirement that in order for a patented 'process' to be included in a standard that a royalty-free non-revokable licence be issued (at the time of inclusion in the standard) covering any implentation of the standard?
Is it possible to write a contract that binds all possible assignees of a patent?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I would think this is off topic. But anyhow, I have an HP 672C Deskjet that worked fine with RedHat 5.2 back in 1999. But after I upgraded to 6.x, then 7.x, I have never been able to get this printer to work. I have not yet downgraded back to see if there was something peculiar in the 5.2 install that allowed it, but even installing drivers from HP has not helped. I am currently using Red Hat 7.2, and have an lpd queue that has test jobs that are months old pending. It has been a while since I've bothered with it. Mandrake did not recognise it either.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
This is not a done deal. The groups that oppose this still have a few cards to play and I would not underestimate their skill at playing them.
No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche
Mods: I have karma to burn :)
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
- Now if only I could get this ancient HPLJ to work under Red Hat!
But anyhow, I have an HP 672C Deskjet that worked fine with RedHat 5.2 back in 1999.Hmm, you can't get your LaserJet working or your DeskJet? Admittedly the DeskJets aren't peaches and cream to set up, but CUPS seems to do a pretty good job with them. I haven't got a lot of experience with the DeskJets though. IIRC I once got a 690 to work just fine but it was all done via CUPS and its own interfaces. The printer ended up eating crackers thanks to my daughter and it's never worked the same (at all) since. :-)
I just want to express thanks to all those in the Free Software movement who *are* politically motivated enough to take these sorts of efforts on behalf of all of us.
If had w3 standards that required us to pay money to follow them, this would put many developers and individuals using those standards into a real bind. Ensuring that these patents will be royalty free is crucial to the growth of standards conformance. We don't want financial *disincentives* to following standards.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many different areas there are in which the freedom of the people is being transferred to corporate or moneyed interests, and how important it is to fight against them. It's good to see that the little guy still wins from time to time.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
We are WAY off topic now.
No print server. Parallel cable. Yes, it does still print test pages. It could be a bad cable, but I doubt it, since it works when I hook my scanner up to it.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Whenever Open Source projects have a major internal disagreement, they split, or fork into two (or more) groups...if the Open Source community doesn't agree with the W3C, then let's find a few other like-minded groups, and form a new group to create both Open (No Patents) and Free (Beer/Speech) standards that all can use. And, of course, they have to be better than the competition's! But, I am sure we can do that since there will not be any mega-corps promoting their own patented/propietory "solutions".
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I only gave CUPS a couple chances (and not recently). I guess I will again later today, after work. (Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to work I go...)
--
But to get back to my orignal post, the on again, off again nature of HP is disconcerting. If they had supported the FSF from the start, there would not have been IP issues with print drivers to begin with.
Keep at them Bruce!
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Did Bruce say "Free Software Community"?
There's still hope that he'll join the light of Free Software rather than the slightly off white of Open Source.
Look, I'm a rather strong advocate of Free Software, indeed of software freedom in general. I try to remember to say (and write) GNU/Linux, and even succeed in not forgetting the GNU as often as not, out of respect for RMSes wishes even if I think his making a big deal out of it is chasing the wrong goal to some degree, and despite the wretched flames from those who would like to sweep RMSes 95% contribution to the core Linux-as-a-UNIX-like operating system under the rug, and claim notoriety for much of his work.
I donate rather generously to the EFF and the FSF, I support and use the GPL in my own work, and am even working on a Media equivelent of the GPL for my more creative literary and media projects, and I tend to value the definition of free software over the definition of open source licenses which are often, IMHO, too liberal in allowing restrictions on the user/customer.
All that having been said, calling Open Source "off-white" (American, perhaps a general English, idiom for 'not quite legitimate', also 'off-color') is utterly bogus.
Open Source has played an important role in bridging the cultural divide between software freedom and the old school, proprietary 'you get what you pay for (and nothing else)' mindset that, despite its trivial disprovability in most areas of life, persists to a remarkable degree among decision makers in many walks of life. Open Source is a stepping stone, a rhetoric that exposes some of the important benefits of free software (peer review and a rigorous scientific method vs. 'secret formula' methodologies, or as I like to put it, 'the free software folks are chemists sharing knowledge, while the proprietary software folks are alchemists hoarding secrets, and everyone knows which approach yields progress and which does not').
Many people coming from a proprietary mindset aren't able to make the complete leap from an information hoarding, toll-charging for every mile travelled mindset to the notion of software freedom, complete with all its ideals and, to the rest of us, obvious advantages of synergy, exponential cooperative growth and development of projects, and so on, but these very same people can and do make the leap toward understanding why the scientific method of sharing knowledge and submitting to rigorous peer review of code does lead to better software. It isn't the only aspect of free software that leads to better software, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it is a factor that they can understand. Once one has grown accustomed to these factors, and has moved one or more project to an open source or free software platform as a result, one begins to experience and learn the other advantages of free software (freedom from orphaned software, freedom from vendor coercion, freedom to set one's own upgrade cycle and timetable, freedom to fix libraries one's work depends on, rather than waiting months for the vendor to get around to it, freedom to leverage the work of others into getting a project out the door in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, in short, freedom to use technology to serve one's business interests, rather than one's vendors' business intersts).
I have witnessed this metamorphesis in at least a dozen people, who came from the aforementioned 'free means worthless' mindset to adament advocates of free software, and in each case their first, rudimentary understanding came via the open source rhetoric, and in each case their understanding did not stop there. RMSes fears that open source would blind people to free software are IMHO largely misguided, as is the entire conflict between the two movements.
Open source is an important stepping stone for those in the proprietary world, a step they can take relatively easilly, and can understand, but one which generally does lead to an understanding of the value of software freedom, not through rhetorici or evangelism, but through personal experience.
So, while the differentiation between Free Software and Open Source is important, this bickering between the two is quite asinine and counterproductive, and while software freedom may encompass a more complete and accurate picture of the benefits offered by free software than Open Source does, Open Source bridges the divide and helps make those advantages available to many who otherwise would have never taken the opportunity. In so doing Open Source provides an important, some might argue critical, service to the Free Software community, and despite any disagreements between the two, Open Source is most certainly not 'off-white.'
I supposte that is a long winded way of saying "can't we just all get along" or perhaps "go away Microsofty, we don't need no stinkin' agent provocatueurs around here." In any event, however you interpret it, let's put this silly 'open source' vs. 'free software' bickering behind us, recognize the importance of both, and move on to enjoying the marvelous digital world the software freedom they help protect has created for us.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Others have probably already wrote something similar, but it doesn't hurt to be said more than once!
Thanks a lot for all your hard work!
Thanks for the representation, Bruce.
One point you might make to the corporate types to get them to side with royalty-free is that it's in their interests. Their usual method of dealing with patents in their way is to find a patent they hold that the other guy infringes on and use that as leverage to get a no-cost cross-licensing agreement. A couple of big cases lately, eg. the JPEG stuff, have involved patents held by people whose sole product is the patents they hold. They don't make anything, therefore they don't make anything that could infringe on any other patents, so there's no reason for them to cross-license. More and more, the corporations are going to be dealing with patents held by people who the corporation won't have any leverage with. And as more patents are issued, a corporation will more and more often be on the wrong side of the equation, ie. they'll be the ones defending against patent enforcement instead of being the ones doing the enforcing. Royalty-free may cost them a bit on the patents they hold, but non-royalty-free would seem to potentially cost them a lot more on patents they don't hold and can't get a cross-licensing agreement on.
Take a look at the X86 CPU architecture. The SVGA standard. Take a look at C. (Please, no flames.) Even the use of silicon for electronics is a "legacy" standard.
C and the X86 instruction set have been around for over twenty years. SVGA has been around for about that long.
All three of these are doubtless "legacy" specifications.
The 386 instruction set has been the "least common denominator" for PC-based programs since the early, early 90s. There isn't a single 32-bit C-compliant program out there that can't be compiled for it. This is an example of interoperability which, as the poster pointed out, is the purpose of the W3C. Every standard exists to improve interoperability.
Heck, even "proprietary" formats have their own standard, so that at least one product can consistently work with it, no matter what part of that product is involved.
SVGA is the basis for communication between nearly every PC and monitor. Not only does it support modularity (your monitor will work with my machine), but it's open-ended. We haven't reached the limit to how much visual data can pass from your computer to your monitor. Since it's analog, the amount of data transferred depends on the capabilities of the hardware, not the standard. Digital formats can't compete yet, because you can only pack so much data into a finitely-resolutioned data stream.
With the way the SVGA standard is structured, you only have to worry about a small number of things.
C is excellent for fast, compact applications. C++ has its uses, but those are largely limited, IMHO, to large, integrated projects. For small, one-purpose utilities, C is usually faster. (And remember that repetitive processes go a lot faster when the individual cycle is only a little bit faster.) C has been extended a few times, (POSIX.1, POSIX.2, C99, and a couple of others I don't recall) but it is largely the same. And ANSI C (C89) is still the base standard, available across-the-board.
Silicon...where would we be today without it? It hasn't outlived its usefulness, at least not yet. Take the dead horse, for example. You can beat it all you want, and you'll be the one pushing it. You could breed a new horse, but then you have to wait for it to grow up, you have to "break" it, you have to get to know it, and, finally, you get to ride it. The whole process takes years.
And then there's the old saw, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
What's this Submit thingy do?
Many people coming from a proprietary mindset aren't able to make the complete leap from an information hoarding, toll-charging for every mile travelled mindset to the notion of software freedom, complete with all its ideals and, to the rest of us, obvious advantages of synergy, exponential cooperative growth and development of projects, and so on, but these very same people can and do make the leap toward understanding why the scientific method of sharing knowledge and submitting to rigorous peer review of code does lead to better software. It isn't the only aspect of free software that leads to better software, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it is a factor that they can understand. Once one has grown accustomed to these factors, and has moved one or more project to an open source or free software platform as a result, one begins to experience and learn the other advantages of free software (freedom from orphaned software, freedom from vendor coercion, freedom to set one's own upgrade cycle and timetable, freedom to fix libraries one's work depends on, rather than waiting months for the vendor to get around to it, freedom to leverage the work of others into getting a project out the door in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, in short, freedom to use technology to serve one's business interests, rather than one's vendors' business intersts).
Sorry to include so much, but I don't think this can be emphasised enough. Open Source strengthens Free Source, and this is why. It's also central to my criticism of RMS's stance on LGPL. I was trying to find a link to his position paper on this and instead I found this which is even more disturbing. From this link:
Stallman recently tried what I would call a hostile takeover of the glibc development. He tried to conspire behind my back and persuade the other main developers to take control so that in the end he is in control and can dictate whatever pleases him. This attempt failed but he kept on pressuring people everywhere and it got really ugly. In the end I agreed to the creation of a so-called "steering committee" (SC). The SC is different from the SC in projects like gcc in that it does not make decisions. On this front nothing changed. The only difference is that Stallman now has no right to complain anymore since the SC he wanted acknowledged the status quo. I hope he will now shut up forever.
The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a control freak and raging manic Stallman is. Don't trust him. As soon as something isn't in line with his view he'll stab you in the back. NEVER voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella since this means in Stallman's opinion that he has the right to make decisions for the project.
Now, I'm all in favor of giving credit where credit is due, and clearly Stallman has done a lot, but it doesn't give him the right to stomp on people who are contributing to the GPL world.
The GPL is brilliant in a number of ways, most important being the freedom it brings to software. But get this, Stallman fanatics, once he put it out there, he doesn't own it. The most important aspect of the GPL is that it builds trust that no one will be able to take private advantage of what you have freely given.
I have no problem with anyone calling it GNU/Linux, but to insist on it is to try and control things. Do we need language police? Let's be clear, RMS does not deserve credit for 95% of Linux, although his actual contribution is substantial. I'd like to know what percentage of the developers who actually contributed code under GPL whether under FSF or otherwise actually support what RMS is trying to do with it.
All this bickering needs to stop, and stop now. It is unproductive and damaging. Isn't there anyone close enough that can get this accross? Are all his associates sycophants? We need to make the tent bigger, not smaller.
Openness is on the road to freedom. Again from the parent comment:
So, while the differentiation between Free Software and Open Source is important, this bickering between the two is quite asinine and counterproductive, and while software freedom may encompass a more complete and accurate picture of the benefits offered by free software than Open Source does, Open Source bridges the divide and helps make those advantages available to many who otherwise would have never taken the opportunity. In so doing Open Source provides an important, some might argue critical, service to the Free Software community, and despite any disagreements between the two, Open Source is most certainly not 'off-white.'
Stop fighting with our friends please, and keep up the good work.
Then why is it alway represented by a two dimensional pallet? That's why I said "at least". And it isn't "exact" either, since many humans are missing at least one of the dimensions.
W3C Patent Board Recommends Royalty-Free Policy
Posted by Hemos on Monday October 07, @07:58AM
from the making-the-smart-choices dept.
Bruce Perens writes "A year ago, the World Wide Web Consortium proposed a policy to allow royalty-generating patents to be embedded in web standards. This would have been fatal to the ability of Free Software to implement those standards. There was much protest, including over 2000 emails to the W3C Patent Policy Board spurred on by a call to arms published on Slashdot. As a result of the complaints, I was invited to join W3C's patent policy board, representing Software in the Public Interest (Debian's corporation) -- but really the entire Free Software community. I was later joined in this by Eben Moglen, for FSF, and Larry Rosen, for the Open Source Initiative." Bruce has written more below - it's well worth reading.
After a year of argument and see-sawing, W3C's patent policy board has voted to recommend a royalty-free patent policy. This recommendation will be put in the form of a draft and released for public comment. There will probably be a dissenting minority report from some of the large patent holders. Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C Advisory Committee, composed of representatives from all of the consortium's members, will eventually make the final decision on the policy. My previous interaction with the Advisory Committee and Berners-Lee lead me to feel that they will approve the royalty-free policy.
The policy will require working group members to make a committment to royalty-free license essential claims - those which you can not help infringing if you are to implement the standard at all. There is also language prohibiting discriminatory patent licenses. The royalty-free grant is limited to the purpose of implementing the standard, and does not extend to any other application of the patent. And there is a requirement to disclose whether any patent used, even a non-essential one, is available under royalty-free terms, so that troublesome patents can be written out of a standard. The limitation of the scope-of-use on patents, and some other aspects of the policy, are less than I would like but all that I believed we could reasonably get. Eben Moglen may have some discussion regarding how GPL developers should cope with scope-of-use-limited patent grants from other parties. For now, it should suffice to say that while this is less than desirable, is will not block GPL development.
I'm not allowed to disclose how individual members voted, but I'll note that the vote did not follow "friends-vs-enemies" lines that the more naive among us might expect - so don't make assumptions.
Now, we must take this fight elsewhere. Although IETF has customarily been held up as the paragon of openness, they currently allow royalty-bearing patents to be embedded in their standards. This must change, and IETF has just initiated a policy discussion to that effect. We must pursue similar policies at many other standards bodies, and at the governments and treaty organizations that persist in writing bad law.
For me, this process has included two trips to France (no fun if you have to work every day) and an appearance at a research meeting in Washington, a week in Cupertino, innumerable conference calls and emails, and upcoming meetings in New York and Boston. That's a lot of time away from my family. Larry Rosen has shouldered a similar burden while nobody has been paying him for his time and trouble, and Eben Moglen put in a lot of time as well. Much of the time was spent listening to royalty-bearing proposals being worked out in excrutiating detail, which fortunately did not carry in the final vote. We also had help from a number of people behind the scenes, notably John Gilmore, and the officers and members of the organizations we represent.
I'd like to give credit to HP. Because I was representing SPI, and HP had someone else representing them at W3C, I made it clear to my HP managers that they would not be allowed to influence my role at W3C - that would have created a conflict-of-interest for me, as well as giving HP unfair double-representation. HP managers understood this, and were supportive. During all but the very end of the process, HP paid my salary and travel expenses while they knew that I was functioning as an independent agent who would explicitly reject their orders. Indeed, HP allowed me to influence their policy, rather than the reverse. This was the result of enlightened leadership by Jim Bell, Scott K. Peterson, Martin Fink, and Scott Stallard.
For most of the existence of Free Software, technology has been of primary importance. It will remain so, but the past several years have seen the emergence of the critical supporting role of political involvement simply so that we can continue to have the right to use and develop Free Software. I do not believe that we will consistently be able to code around bad law - we must represent what is important about our work and involve ourselves in policy-making worldwide, or what we do will not survive. I hope to continue to serve the Free Software Community in this role.
Respectfully Submitted
Bruce Perens
"
Is Smoochy the Rhino!!!!!
Your argument needs examples of licenses that underwent this transition to illustrate how the Open Source movement eases the transition from proprietary software licenses to Free Software licenses. Easing the transition to Free Software is one of the things the Open Source movement does not do because that would require at some point talking about software freedom which the Open Source movement was designed never to talk about.
Businesses (the primary target of the Open Source movement's message) like the Open Source movement because that movement allows businesses to gain the social cachet of the "Open Source" moniker with non-free software licenses. This essay explains the difference between the two movements quite well, in particular explaining why businesses like the Open Source movement.
Apple's Public Source License (APSL) is a fine example of how the Open Source movement can injure Free Software pressure. Apple has revised the APSL under pressure from the Free Software movement. The Free Software movement would like Apple to further pursue a truly free software license even though Apple does not want to contribute to a commons of software they don't control. The Open Source Initiative thinks Apple's lack of reciprocity is acceptable and lists the APSL as an accepted license. So long as Apple is willing to settle for acceptance by the Open Source Initiative and so long as the moniker of "Open Source" is favorable, Apple has less incentive to continue towards making the APSL a Free Software license.
Digital Citizen
I mostly agree with the points your are making, though remain skeptical of the instance you cite. I even agree that we are (in normal circumstance, mostly) responsible for how others percieve us, but I should point out:
... I may have to borrow your turn of phrase in the future :-)), I couldn't possibly agree more.
He is responsible for how he is percieved, so it does no good to say the accusations are exagerated.
I think Oppenheimer, numerous Hollywood personalities blacklisted during the MacCarthy debacle, what's-his-name who saved people's lives from a pending explosion during the Atlanta Olympics who was later publicly accused by the FBI of being the bomber, then yet later found to be utterly innocent but whose reputation has never fully recovered, or any number of Aschcroft's current detainees who happen to be completely innocent of involvement in terrorism might take exception to the assumption you express.
Yes, I'm exaggerating my position slightly to make a point.
RMS has numerous enemies, many of them idealogical enemies who repudiate free software and all it stands for, many others personal opponents due to whatever circumstances (professional differences, personal disagreements, personality conflicts, what have you). Some are honest and balanced in their criticisms, many others are less honest and much less balanced in their accusations. Unless RMS is going to hire a marketing company to manage his image (as many famous people with a lot more money than RMS has in fact do) he is going to suffer disporportionately when others criticize him, whether or not the criticism is deserved and whether or not he did anything to precipitate it.
I agree with much of what you have said at the philisophical level, but having personally debunked a great deal of misinformation (which I myself believed for many years) regarding RMS I remain profoundly skeptical of the kind of broad and dramatic accusations you quoted earlier (though I fully understand you intended it as an example in making a point, not as a specific indictment per se).
However, I didn't mean to imply you assumed guilt, merely that the way the item was quoted appeared to imply guilt where it may not in fact exist (or maybe it does, I really don't know). Having waded through so much diatribe that isn't true, I felt compelled to offer some general defense for the guy and to express my sentiment that I find such accusations to be unlikely to be true or accurate, even if they are based in some fact (i.e. at best I suspect they are grossly exaggerated), based on how many other accusations against the guy I have since found to be utterly baseless in their entirety. But that is just an opinion, one that could certainly be wrong in this particular instance.
On the point for our need for unity and to have a willingness to get past whatever differences we have, agree to disagree, and move on in insuring our freedom and preventing what you so correctly fear, the implimentation of "Architectures of Control" (excellent way to put it BTW
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came
by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
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