Working Toward a Patent-Agnostic Open Source License

Glyn Moody writes "Are there ever circumstances when software patents that require payment might be permitted by an open source license? That's the question posed by a new license that is being submitted to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for review. The MPEG Working Group wants to release a reference implementation of the new MPEG eXtensible Middleware (MXM) standard as open source, but it also wants to be able to sell patent licenses. If it can't, it might not make the implementation open source; but if it does, it might undermine the fight against software patent proliferation."

Comments

Re:wrong word in article title

[Mr. Slippery]

Agnostics believe that neither the existence nor the non-existence of God can be proven.

"Agnostic" comes from roots meaning "not knowing", but its use in the sense of "not having an opinion about" is well-established.

But honestly, would it KILL you to learn what these words mean before you use post them on a widely read public forum?

Would it kill you to check a dictionary before trying to go all vocabulary-Nazi on someone? :-)