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European Parliament To Exclude Free Software With FRAND
First time submitter jan.van.gent writes "The European Parliament is on the verge of adopting a directive reforming standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms, an undefined term which has been seen as a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open Source software. The Business Software Alliance has been very active trying to get FRAND terms into the directive."
This is confusing. It seems to go like this:
General consensus: Some "standards" are being derailed by patent holders who make unreasonable demands.
Euros: We'll pass legislation that the demands have to be reasonable.
FSF: No! Because even so-called reasonable demands exclude FOSS, hence, they aren't really "reasonable".
Euros: But half a loaf of bread...
FSF: No! Give us the whole damn loaf, or nothing!
Personally I'd be happy to get half a loaf, and then allow for others to keep fighting for the other half.
get "fair and reasonable" licensing terms to be defined as the lower of $x per unit or y% of product revenue. With no revenue, FOSS could freely use and distribute such patented software. It would even be advantageous, since software which would otherwise be locked behind a paywall could be made freely available.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"supported by industry associations such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and members including Apple, Microsoft and SAP"
The evil trio of IT and it's attack dog. But hey, they just play the game of monopoly as far as the law allows. The really ugly part are the politicians who accept the bribes - sorry, I mean, work with lobbyists - and decide regulations benefitting the 1% only.
There is nothing in FRAND, that I can see, that prohibits open source software or other open IP
There most certainly is; from the GPL:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License
if you agree to terms that obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
How can I have the freedom to redistribute my software at no cost (which is one of the freedoms you have with free software) if I have to pay royalties to some standards body in order to do so, and force anyone who helps in that redistribution (i.e. mirrors, participants in a P2P networks, etc.) to do so?
Palm trees and 8
Standards can be legislated as compulsory. To require the use of patent items and hence compulsory payments, is nothing more than a government enforced monopoly with the sole intent of driving out all other businesses covered by that standard. None of them can sell that service, only one of them can, all the others are force to buy it and in the case of FOSS then have to give it away ie a direct corrupt tactic to drive FOSS out of business.
Want it in a standard, then give it away to start with or piss off with your corrupt intent.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
There is nothing in FRAND, that I can see, that prohibits open source software or other open IP
There most certainly is; from the GPL:
If there is a problem here, it is with the GPL, not with FRAND. As far as I can tell, BSD licensed software should be just fine. The GPL is not a free license, it is a very restrictive license.
But I'm not sure there is even a problem. The quote from the FRAND requirement posted above makes reference to patents, not to copyright: "FRAND is an approach used for decades by Standards committees that require any participant and any IP involved with a proposed Standard to offer open and uniform patent licensing to everyone (on the planet)." [emphasis mine]. GPL is a copyright license, not a patent license. Copyright law and patent law are two entirely different things, so I'm not sure there is any conflict here at all.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
This is unlikely to hold up long term even if it gets through parliament, as a number of European governments and cities have already adopted open source software in recent years.
This is another sad attempt to get proprietary software back into where it has been kicked out.