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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."
It's just a way of trying to make software patents more valid.
I would say that any patent that lacks hardware (chemical compound or physical device) wouldn't be valid.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Does this mean that the source code would be freely available, but that you couldn't use it without paying them? I skimmed the artical and linked pages, but can't figure out what this would actually mean.
They should use the BSD or MIT licenses if they're more interested in releasing code than promoting public policy. It would provide the key functionality they claim to need without dragging their whole process through the muck and mire.
What is the motive behind this new license? To cherry pick a few of the ideals of Open Source Software (OSS)?
... I don't mind more licenses and I think the MPL was a step in the right direction but not perfect. Either way, observers can be sure of one thing, there are at least some aspects of open source that appeal very much to a lot of people. It will be interesting to see what results from this endeavor.
It sounds like, from the license, that they want the openness of many eyes reviewing and improving the code with derivative work while at the same time licensing that idea to other companies. Which, frankly, I cannot comprehend as any company would just opt for the open source community code to integrate into their product than pay the patent holder to roll their own. Or are they planning on charging you for the "open source" version like normal software? If so, how is that any difference from a commercial license modified so that you receive the code to review with the product?
I mean, I'm happy for them to do whatever they feel like
My work here is dung.
Our project (FreeSWITCH) uses the MPL for the main application and BSD for satellite libraries that we create that can be used by other projects etc.
Once you decide to have open source code, it's more logical to stick with the fact that at least the core code is FREE and come up with ways to develop a product on top of it if you want to have something to sell. Otherwise it sounds like an "open source tax" and businesses do not like uncertainty. If they choose to use a code base they need to know it will always be available.
That's all well and good for a society that doesn't produce ideas and share them between themselves very freely. It more describes the pre-internet 80s society than the modern internet-driven society - Apple, Youtube, and the like have shown that society does not have to be fed, as consumers, only things that dedicated producers provide.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Published source code is not the same as "open" source code.
They're trying to confuse the issue so they can have it both ways - look like a good corporate citizen by donating to the community, but making us pay for the donation.
The real world uses Adobe Flash.
From the email:
Well, maybe someone is trying to argue that other OSI licenses also don't promise anything regarding royalty-free patent-licenses. But this is because licenses are predominantly about the author's copyright and not about the patents. However if the text of this licenses explicitely deals with patents and uses them to restrict users rights, then it formally violates already item 1 of the Open Source Definition.
Stallman's answer comes to mind
"Agnostic" comes from roots meaning "not knowing", but its use in the sense of "not having an opinion about" is well-established.
Would it kill you to check a dictionary before trying to go all vocabulary-Nazi on someone? :-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That renders the patents nearly irrelevant, completely so for general purpose computers. There's nothing to prevent a commercial exploiter from distributing the source code to their customers, along with a compiler and a one-step process for compiling it. Nor for any Linux distro to do essentially the same -- create an "mpeg-mxm" package which requires mpeg-mxm-source and gcc and automagically compiles the package. Even Apple and Microsoft could do it. I'm not sure why this would be acceptable to the MPEG group. There simply is no way to effectively control "object code" without also controlling source code. Not only can source code be translated into object code, it can be executed directly by an interpreter. Then what is your patent doing? As for the dodge of claiming "a machine-readable medium containing the instructions to execute this nonpatentable algorithm"... I wonder if they've realized that they've claimed any computer-readable medium containing the patent description itself...
Somewhere there are lawyers sitting around a bottle of scotch thinking up ways to use words for the exact opposite of what they mean. They are the Drunken Idiot Attorney Forum (DIAF) working group. Clearly this license is a draft version of their proposal for an international Patented Open Software (POS) standard to be pushed through the ISO fast track process next year despite the determined opposition of just about everybody involved.
Fortunately for all of us this endeavor violates at least three Microsoft business process patents.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Does this mean that the source code would be freely available, but that you couldn't use it without paying them? I skimmed the artical and linked pages, but can't figure out what this would actually mean.
TFA says that it includes a patent covenant not to sue two classes of people: Those distributing only the source, and those compiling for 'internal purposes' only.
It seems to me that the second case would handle e.g. Linux users that compile and run the code on their machine, and use it to view content. The first case is less clear, it seems that it might be intended to cover people 'working' with the code, and that might possibly extend to Linux distros that distribute the code (but not binaries) to their users (who can then compile it).
Not sure if it's achieved, but the goal seems to be to sell patent licenses to big corporations that make lots of money off of this sort of thing, while not bothering with individuals and hobbyists.