OSI President Questions WebM Patent License Compatibility with Open Source

Via the H comes a report that the Simon Phipps, current President of the Open Source Initiative, thinks that the VP8 patent Cross-license agreeement Google brokered with the MPEG-LA is incompatible with the Open Source definition. The primary problems are that the license is not sub-licensable and only covers certain uses, leading to conflict with OSD clauses five, six, and seven. Phipps concludes: "As a consequence, I suggest the license is flawed when considered in relation to open source projects and is likely to be negatively received by many communities that value software freedom. Doubtless a case can be made that the patent license is optional, but I suspect the community issues may remain. Once again we're left with our fingers crossed. Google's making the right noises, but this draft agreement seems like a particularly unworkable approach for free and open source software. Its failure to allow sublicensing seems like a major flaw. Even if this doesn't result in a requirement for all end-users to sign the agreement, the discrepancies between this document and the OSD leave it disruptive to open source adoption of VP8."

Comments

Re:Open Source Opposes Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn. 1/10, jimmies un-rustled.

Your troll material is derivative and you lay it on too thick. You open with founding fathers? That's a red flag. You blew your load too early. A good troll draws the reader in with a plausible premise, then jabs the knife of absurdity once interest is caught and defenses lowered.

Too little, too late

[njahnke]

No one uses WebM. Google dropped the ball. Now even Mozilla is allowing their browser to use the underlying OS to support H.264 playback. This ship has sailed. Better luck next time.

Re:Too little, too late

[Air-conditioned cowh]

No one uses WebM. Google dropped the ball. Now even Mozilla is allowing their browser to use the underlying OS to support H.264 playback. This ship has sailed. Better luck next time.

The very presence of VP8/VP9 means that the license terms for H.264/H.265 can't become too unreasonable. If they do then there is an alternative. If there is no alternative then MPEGLA can jack the license fees up as much as they wish.

Re:Too little, too late

[Microlith]

The fees aren't what's important. It's the licensing terms and rules they seek to impose as a condition of access. The goal isn't money, it's using the rights granted by patent protection as a club to control others.

Re:Go with what you can get.

[h4rr4r]

The only thing we wanted was a competitor that was FOSS compatible. If WebM is not that it has no use at all. Might as well stick with h264 in that case.

H.264 Has 30 Licensors. 1,229 Licensees.

[westlake]

Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.

WebM is a distribution codec for the web.

The MPEG LA licensors are a global R&D and manufacturing combine of breathtaking size, scope and power. The licensees are built on the same scale. MPEG LA

Re:No Big Surprise

[hairyfeet]

This is why I railed against H.264 in HTML V5, as MPEG-LA made it VERY clear when Mozilla tried dealing with them that there will NEVER be any license that covers downstream, ever.

The sad part is thanks to them being villains with good PR Apple will ram so much nasty shit through with HTML V5 its gonna be a corporate wet dream, but because so many devs dream of iMoney they won't say boo. Look at how many actually tried to excuse having HTML V5 stuck with H.264 over WebM or Theora or Drac with "Its open!". Bullshit, its a patent troll, and now its built in to the future of the web and I have no doubt Apple will get the DRM rammed through as well.

I feel a rant coming on..To all the guys that said "Anybody but M$!" that bought Apple products to stick to teh man? You deserve this, the point was to replace MSFT with something better NOT with something worse. The sad part is how many buy the bullshit, H.264 is worse in EVERY SINGLE METRIC over the Flash that its supposed to replace, worse in CPU, memory,bandwidth, and of course while Adobe let you package Flash with anything and even let there be a FOSS spinoff without so much as a C&D you're gonna replace it with a patent troll, because St Steve of Cupertino said it should be so. Did anybody ever think, for even a second, he just MIGHT have an ulterior motive? Like how Flash would let anybody host apps and games without going through his appstore?

What is fucking sad and pathetic is for the first time in history we have made truly insane amount of CPU power affordable to the masses, computers like something out of Dick Tracy you can throw in your pocket that can do just incredible things, and this huge web of knowledge that opens up everything, music, video, the world, yet we are gonna hand the whole damned thing over to the suits because they are good at the bullshit and they make shiny hipster toys...fuck! Wake the fuck up people, these are NOT nice guys! How many lawsuits have we seen from MPEG-LA in the past 5 years? How many from Apple? You are replacing a bumbling hamfisted company like MSFT with one that can actually pull off their nasty plans, doesn't anybody think this is a bad idea? Don't replace one master for another guys, that is just insanity.