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

Software patents.

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:Software patents.

[kansas1051]

I would say that any patent that lacks hardware (chemical compound or physical device) wouldn't be valid.

Few patents target software per se. Most "software patents" actually claim (cover) computing hardware that implements some allegedly novel/non-obvious functionality. In any event, why allow someone to patent an application-specific integrated circuit that performs new function X but not a FGPA configured via a HDL that performs new function X?

MIT/BSD licenses

[argent]

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.

Re:MIT/BSD licenses

[Wesley Felter]

According to the thread, many people in OSI believe that MIT/BSD licenses do (implicitly) grant patent rights. This was a surprise to me.

Re:MIT/BSD licenses

[Pinky's Brain]

Plain English, do you speak it?

"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted"

Or did I miss the part where they said "but we withhold the right to sue you for inducement to infringe if you try the former, and actual infringement for the latter"?

Re:This Doesn't Make a Whole Lot of Sense

[jvillain]

I think it boils down to this. The open source community can feel free to contribute code and documentation to our project. But we will feel free to keep you from being able to run it on an open source platform and we have the force of patents to stop you. If you want to fork the code we just drop the patent bomb.

The MPEG group and the other douche bags they hang with are the most anti open source group there is. Am I ever going to play Blu-ray movies on my Linux computer? Not likely.

Re:What does it mean?

[spitzak]

It really seems to me that in common use "Open Source" *does* now mean you are free to do whatever you want with the source. Just being able to *look* at the source is not called Open Source, it is probably best to call it "published source code" or "the source code is available for you to look at".

"Free Software" means the enforced-freeness of the GPL, which is a subset of Open Source.

So for most uses this is neither Open Source or Free Software.

Re:What does it mean?

[Dwonis]

The open source definition is a set of 10 criteria that "distribution terms" (i.e. a copyright license) must meet to be legitimately called "open source". The problem is that, if you're dishonest (and many people are), you can still use patent law or other means to render most of those criteria moot while still nominally meeting them.

On the other hand, FSF's free software definition only deals with the necessary results of those rules, rather than the rules themselves. It doesn't matter whether somebody's lawyers have figured out a clever way to cover all the "open source" checkboxes, unless you have the actual, meaningful freedoms to run, study, adapt, improve, and redistribute a program (including improved versions) to anyone for any purpose at any price, then the program is not free software.

The FSF has a fairly decent (and reasonably fair) comparison of "free software" vs "open source", entitled Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software

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? :-)