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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
Which is exactly the point. By creating standards that require royalty payments, you are preventing GPL software from implementing the standard. That was the GP's question, and thus the question is answered.
Palm trees and 8
Any form of licensing for standards is incompatible with open source software. When you distribute open source you need to distribute it will all the rights otherwise the burden on the recipient (often an individual rather than a company) to acquire such licenses is excessive and unreasonable. How many people would use Open Office for example if they had to separately go and buy a set of complex FRAND licenses with every download?
Making distributors of open source responsible for acquiring the licenses won't work either, because they can't control downstream copies (the very nature of open source) and you place a major hurdle in the way of individuals or small companies becoming distributors themselves (which is the spirit of open source).
Basically, FRAND is a nightmare for open source. Of course traditional software companies love it because it means that they get to benefit from reduced competition, but you can kiss goodbye to most of your innovation and the end result will be customers paying more for worse software.
In my view the only acceptable open standard is one that is unencumbered by *any* licensing requirements. Standards organisations either need to get with the 21st century on this one or be (rightfully) ignored.
There is nothing in FRAND, that I can see, that prohibits open source software or other open IP. In fact, Standards committees -- given a choice -- would far rather build in open IP to closed IP (even FRAND) into a Standard. Can someone knowledgable explain how FRAND in any way harms open source?
Prohibits, no. However it does discriminate against those who cannot pay the license fees but would otherwise still be able to implement the standard - most of the open-source contributors are like this - e.g. VideoLAN (scroll down to "Patent threats").
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Here is the text of the document, the interesting parts are in annex2.
In my opinion, RAND only gives the illusion that it can match the safety of open standards. It isn't defined properly, and in the end the IPs of a standard are still in the hands of a company or a cartel (sorry, standards body), giving them effective monopoly over a market segment.
Which is still incompatible with the GPL(2|3). See the GPL sections I posted, or read the relevant licenses yourself:
https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Palm trees and 8
The problem is not the F, it is the ND. Non-discriminatory pricing that is non-zero discriminates against work developed in any any non-commercial setting. Even if we were talking about absurdly low prices (fractions of a cent per unit), work developed academically or by individuals utilizing the patent cannot be distributed widely since an academic or individual would not have the resources to track distribution, and if work is popular would not have the money to pay the royalties in the first place. Basically FRAND forces commercialization.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
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
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.
If are the source of, or user, of GPL property, then the entire FRAND thing is irrelevant for you. If it's open, it's open. Copyrights and patents are granted only the original creators or original works. If the creator wants to make it open, great! The Standards body prefers that, and so do all the users. These two are not in conflict at all. Open source helps patents, because it provides a widely available reference that can trivially be used against anyone who might (purposefully or accidentally) claim any rights to it.
You NEVER pay royalties to a Standards body. You pay them only the owner of the property.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Is that like how Lexus discriminates against people who can only afford Toyotas, or scooters, or bicycles?
I don't like the current patent system, but an argument that boils down to "I can't afford it, so I can take it for free" is not very compelling.
If Standard REQUIRES patented technology to implement, then you are right. You can't copy a patent and then think you can distribute that for free. However, first there are very few Standards that required patented technology -- although that might get you to market faster, or save you some money.
If you think can implement something close to the proposed Standard, in a way that doesn't infringe on a disclosed patent (patents are always disclosed in advance during Standards meetings), then tell the committee. They almost certainly will use your approach over a patented one. Remember it takes about 75% of the members in a Standards committee to approve a draft Standard. And for anything patented, that benefits only one member, and hurts all the rest. They are not stupid.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Is that like how Lexus discriminates against people who can only afford Toyotas, or scooters, or bicycles?
I don't like the current patent system, but an argument that boils down to "I can't afford it, so I can take it for free" is not very compelling.
Except that we aren't talking about Toyota now, are talking about the European Parliament... you know, the guys that are supposed to make sure the technology that it will use won't discriminate against any citizens in the Union.
The same guys that should make sure the collected taxes are used, to the best possible, in their citizens interest - and Open Source is able to deliver technology at a lower cost, so why should they be excluded from the very start?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Sure, you can push off patent issues on your users. You can close the source and control your users too.
The lie appears again!
The GPL is a free license. It ensures the freedom of the software, and the freedom of its recipients to access the software to suit their purposes. It prevents the middleman from taking away the access to the source, which has always been the goal of the GPL.
It places no restrictions at all on the user, only on those who redistribute the software which the law prohibits anyway. It restricts the ability to close the source and screw over people who receive modified copies, but hey, that's the "price" we pay.
Permission to redistribute GPL programs depends on fulfilling certain conditions regarding patents. There are conflicts.
Except that not everyone who sells free software is doing so as part of a commercial venture; free software may be sold at a break even price by a nonprofit or by volunteers (e.g. as part of a kit for running an installfest). It may also be the case that a mirror of various distributions charges its users for access, where some of the software might be royalty free and some might not be (and now that mirror could be forced to monitor all the software that its users download for compliance purposes). There are generally good reasons that royalties are forbidden by the GPL: royalties encourage a particular distribution infrastructure in which everyone gets their software from a small number of distributors, while the GPL is meant to encourage sharing.
More importantly, why should implementing a standard make it impossible for a developer to choose a commonly used software license?
Palm trees and 8
Making such changes is easy. You just replace a few words here and there in the law and you're done.
Email is still governed by the stored communications act (from the 1980s, IIRC). The FCC regulates interstate communications using laws from 1996, and those are the RECENT ones that are relevant. (common carrier laws are still based on common-law history going back to the 1800s).
It is rarely, if ever, easy to change law.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Euros: We'll pass legislation that allows the BSA to rape you, but they have to be reasonable about it, no rectal bleeding and such.
FSF: No! Keep business dick out of the public's ass!
Euros: What if it's just half a dick. That's reasonable as a compromise, right? right?
Seriously. Someone making an outlandish and outright wrong demand isn't grounds for compromise, it's grounds for rejection.
Standards are chosen for the convenience of the producer of a patented service. I don't ask for H.264 video. I just want the content. If using a patent encumbered tech to deliver your goods makes business sense for you, then you should pay the royalty. But making the consumer pay a royalty again for the ability to consume is double charging, and doing so with monopoly restricted choices. If ATT wants to use GSM cell towers, fine. But why should the handset user pay a royalty to connect?
It's silly to claim that the harm to free software is negligible. The FOSS ecosystem can't work with royalty requirements. And most FOSS would go with patent free code if it were possible. But interoperability requires implementing standards. That's not a choice.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
So many government mandated standards require the use of patented technology. Every single digital TV standard worldwide requires licenses for a hundred or more patents just to build the receiver/decoder. Then you need licenses on top of that to actually decode the audio and video content.
Digital radio is just as bad requiring licenses for various flavors of MPEG audio.
Anyone wanting to set up a mobile phone network or build hardware for one (including handsets) is going to need to license 100s of patents even for the most basic GSM handset.
Wireless data standards like WiFi and WiMax are also heavily patented.
In many cases these patents (or patent pools) require the payment of per-unit royalties where it is impossible for any free-as-in-zero-cost program (be it Free Software, Open Source or otherwise) to ever get a license (I know of at least one game engine that uses a derivative of MPEG audio to store things like music and had to remove support for this from their mod SDK because its impossible to get a license for a MP3 encoder for a free-as-in-zero-cost program no matter how much you pay in license fees)
Along the same lines, it would be impossible to produce a free-as-in-zero-cost DVD player for Linux (closed or open source) because patents on essential components of the DVD standards like MPEG video require the payment of per-unit royalties.
For those who think VP8 and other "open" codecs are the solution, even Google wont be able to stand up to MPEGLA if the holders of the MPEG patents decide to take Google to court and claim that VP8 infringes their patents.
The only way this can change is to get politicians in Washington and Canberra and Brussels and Auckland and Tokyo and Berlin and London and elsewhere who will pass laws eliminating software patents. But that wont happen as long as big companies continue to hold political influence over the worlds governments.
GSM in much of Europe? Spectrum licenses were granted on the condition that they were used with a specific protocol or set of protocols. GSM is patented, so you can only produce mobile phones for use in Europe if you pay the relevant fees.
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