---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Glyn Wintle glynwintle@yahoo.com Date: 7 Feb 2008 10:40 Subject: [ORG-discuss] European Commission to exclude Open Source developers with patented standards? To: Open Rights Group open discussion list org-discuss@lists.openrightsgroup.org
http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-39739/european-commission-to-exclude-... The European Commission is organizing next week in Brussels a conference on "European ICT standardisation policy at a crossroads: A new direction for global success". Among the papers in discussion for this conference, one paper suggests to allow RAND standards as general policy. The European Commission seems to listen to the big industry who contributed to the discussion paper. RAND standards (such as h264 or MPEG2) are a way to exclude FLOSS developers, because they require royalty payments that developers cannot afford.
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On 07-Feb-2008, David Gerard wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Glyn Wintle glynwintle@yahoo.com Date: 7 Feb 2008 10:40
RAND [terms for patent licenses] (such as h264 or MPEG2) are a way to exclude FLOSS developers, because they require royalty payments that developers cannot afford.
The argument of "cannot afford" is unlikely to win too many to our side. Fortunately, it's not the strongest argument against such terms.
Worse than "cannot afford" is the fact that these terms usually require payment on a per-customer or per-installation or some such basis, which is infeasible to comply with for free software simply because there is (by design) no limitation on redistribution.
Many such license terms are on such a basis that redistribution is explicitly prohibited, clearly excluding free software.
"David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-39739/european-commission-to-exclude-...
Anything do-able by those of us not near Brussels, besides contacting MEPs and protesting about the infinite patent licensing costs?
Regards,