Google WebM Calls "Open Source" Into Question

snydeq writes "As open source becomes mainstream, vendors are under pressure to market their offerings using the 'open source' brand to the highest degree possible — a trend that may eventually degrade the meaning of 'open source' as we know it, Savio Rodrigues writes. Witness WebM, which Google has positioned as an open alternative to H.264. After examining the software license, some in the open source community have questioned whether WebM should be classified as open source software. Google did not use an OSI-approved license for WebM, meaning that, at least in theory, WebM cannot be considered open source under the OSD — the 'gold standard' by which many government and business open source policies are defined. Moreover, when prodded for OSI review, Google required that the OSI agree to 'changes to how OSI does licenses' as a precursor to submitting a license for OSI review and approval. 'When Google, one of the largest supporters of open source, goes out and purposefully circumvents the OSI, what signal does this send to other vendors? How important is using an OSI-approved license likely to be in the future if other vendors follow Google's lead?'" An anonymous reader adds: "It turns out that libvpx, Google's VP8 library, isn't compatible with the GPLv2. Google is apparently aware of the problem and working on a solution.

Comments

FSF Free Software, however.

[David Gerard]

Note that WebM is, however, FSF-approved Free Software.

The FSF is rather more active than the OSI, and is unlikely to, e.g., get its corporate registration suspended just because they were too arse-disabled to get their paperwork in.

We do need some sort of organisation like the OSI, perhaps even the OSI itself. But I'm entirely unsurprised someone would consider the present OSI just not to have its shit together enough to be taken seriously.

Re:FSF Free Software, however.

[mzs]

That link makes no claims that it is a FSF approved license, just that FSF is a proponent of using WebM format on the web. I would imagine a FSF approved license would be one of the GNU ones. They make statements about which licenses are GPL compatible at times, this was not such a statement either.

Re:I sense scaremongering

[David Gerard]

Has anyone run it past debian-legal yet? That would also be a credible mark of acceptability as free software.

Re:I sense scaremongering

[KiloByte]

It is not compatible with GPLv2. It is very clearly compatible with GPLv3 (at least the problem section pointed in the article).

compatibilty

[mzs]

I am not a lawyer. Here's the gist. the license is not compatible with:

GPL, GPL2, LGPL2

compatible with:

BSD, MIT

likely compatible with:

Apache, CDDL, Mozilla

unlikely compatible with:

GPL3

This all boils down to the patent clause at the end. It makes further restrictions upon distribution. They are worded in a way that looks to be compatible with Apache and the like, but someone from the FSF should really step in and announce if the two different patent clauses are compatible in GPL3 and WebM license.

That's all that really matters to most, it is not an OSI approved license, since it has not been submitted. That matters to some organizations in choosing a license.

Re:I sense scaremongering

[KiloByte]

debian-legal is a place for discussion, the final decision is made by the FTP-masters. And lo, libvpx cleared through NEW today, without any bumps.
The article is merely a trolling attempt.