Slashdot Mirror
European Commission Support of FRAND Licenses Hurts Open Standards
jrepin writes "While the UK has seen the light, the EU has actually gone backwards on open standards in recent times. The original European Interoperability Framework required royalty-free licensing, but what was doubtless a pretty intense wave of lobbying in Brussels overturned that, and EIF v2 ended up pushing FRAND, which effectively locks out open source — the whole point of the exercise. Shamefully, some parts of the European Commission are still attacking open source."
That's often true, but on the other hand, look at something like ACTA, where national governments were lining up to back the Big Media position, and it basically died because of a European-level grass-roots campaign.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way of knowing which level(s) of government will actually side with their people and which will side with their corporate sponsors these days, particularly with all the conveniently indirectly elected "representatives" throughout the system now.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
According to the article, there are [still] no software patents in the EU. So theoretically, any FRAND claims of software patents should be ignored. Of course, software patent holders never say "these are software patents." They just say "patents." It'll be interesting how initial claims of this sort will work out.