European Parliament To Exclude Free Software With FRAND 219
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."
Re:What is so unfair about "fair?" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:What is so unfair about "fair?" (Score:4, Informative)
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 [gnu.org] 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 [wikidot.com] (scroll down to "Patent threats").
RAND is an illusion (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the text of the document, the interesting parts are in annex2. [europa.eu]
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.
Re:What is so unfair about "fair?" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:One solution... (Score:5, Informative)
... and even worse, as I like to point out; you are in violation of a software patent even if your implementation of the same idea is vastly superior in every way.
Re:What is so unfair about "fair?" (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:What is so unfair about "fair?" (Score:4, Informative)
More importantly, why should implementing a standard make it impossible for a developer to choose a commonly used software license?
Re:Trying to figure out who the good guys are (Score:4, Informative)
the lameness of those standards are caused by the obviousness of most patents in the first place. if gsm (and the rest) wasn't patented, there'd BE one world standard already. instead we have four or five completely incompatible standards, and service is still a ripoff.
the FOSS authors prohibit for the same reasons the patent holders claim: to prevent abuse. the FOSS guys are often shafted by binary only blobs for hardware drivers that make debugging things difficult or impossible, and the closed guys don't want their old products competing with their lightly patched new ones so they don't mind this. they love artificial scarcity.
If you want to complain about the ideological 'purity' of the FOSS guys, then you must also complain about the 'purity' of the patent trolls, because it's a equal-opposite reaction. They are the ones who claim they want to lock down every piece of electronics that uses software for the sake of 'respecting creator rights', even if that software becomes abusive to the people who bought the products in the first place.
Re:Trying to figure out who the good guys are (Score:4, Informative)
You know what else is in the agreement? A statement that MPEG-LA may not have all the relevant patents and any third parties that want fees is between them and you. MPEG-LA offer not indemnity or assurances.
Re:What is so unfair about "fair?" (Score:4, Informative)