Google WebM Calls "Open Source" Into Question 185
snydeq writes "As open source becomes mainstream, vendors are under pressure to market their offerings using the 'open source' brand to the highest degree possible — a trend that may eventually degrade the meaning of 'open source' as we know it, Savio Rodrigues writes. Witness WebM, which Google has positioned as an open alternative to H.264. After examining the software license, some in the open source community have questioned whether WebM should be classified as open source software. Google did not use an OSI-approved license for WebM, meaning that, at least in theory, WebM cannot be considered open source under the OSD — the 'gold standard' by which many government and business open source policies are defined. Moreover, when prodded for OSI review, Google required that the OSI agree to 'changes to how OSI does licenses' as a precursor to submitting a license for OSI review and approval. 'When Google, one of the largest supporters of open source, goes out and purposefully circumvents the OSI, what signal does this send to other vendors? How important is using an OSI-approved license likely to be in the future if other vendors follow Google's lead?'"
An anonymous reader adds: "It turns out that libvpx, Google's VP8 library, isn't compatible with the GPLv2. Google is apparently aware of the problem and working on a solution.
I sense scaremongering (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need the OSI to tell you what is open source and what isn't. Read the OSD and the WebM license and see for yourself.
Re:is the source avaiable for download / inspectio (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft has a "shared source" thing [microsoft.com] where they will show you the source code for reference purposes (Wikipedia says for viewing Microsoft classes while debugging) but you can't redistribute it. Definitely not open source.
Re:Dear OSS Zealots (Score:3, Insightful)
Only a complete idiot would ignore how compatible a license is with other open source licenses. I can in two lines create an open source license that is totally open and totally useless. Watch:
Totally incompatible license v1.0
"You're free to use this code for anything without restriction if any and all code in derivatives is licensed under the Totally incompatible license v1.0"
This obviously meets every definition of the OSI, but it's not compatible with anything, not even the BSD license. It's utterly useless unless you want the whole universe to relicense.
This strikes me as misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems very clear that Google is trying to support open standards and technologies. Different people are going back and forth over licenses and procedures. Everyone seems to be acting in good faith. And there's no reason to believe that it won't all get worked out.
The language in the /. article almost makes it sound like Google is trying to do something like "Embrace and Extend". I just don't think that's what's going on.
If we can move to a place where most video is managed with open technologies, it will be very good for everyone. I'm grateful to the companies who get it, and to people who are trying to figure out the best way to do it. And I don't think the fact that there are small differences of opinion among those folks is a good reason to get upset.
Re:Dear OSS Zealots (Score:3, Insightful)
So, every product that claims to be 'green' is equally green for you?
You don't think it would be useful to have some help in determining which ones adhere to practices that are generally considered to be good (or at least, not so bad) for the environment?
I personally am not willing to trust that every claim of green, or open, or whatever is equal, but I don't have time to investigate these things myself, so I appreciate the help of organizations that will help me sort these things out.
I'm not looking for companies or products claiming these titles to be perfect, but without some scrutiny these claims will become meaningless and we won't even know the difference.
Google wants "changes to how OSI does licenses'" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, here is what Google was concerned about:
1) We will want a label explicitly deterring the use of the license.
2) We will want the bod list archives open for any discussions of webm. We
are not comfortable with OSI being closed.
3) We need to know OSI's current corporate status. I heard that osi was a
california corporation again, but I would like to know, from the group, that
this is true for 2010 and that there aren't any issues there.
So, they want the OSI to be more open, and they want to discourage the use of the WebM license by others to prevent license sprawl, and they want to verify OSI's corporate status.
Anyone else have a problem with these changes? They seem help everyone.
Re:Dear OSS Zealots (Score:5, Insightful)
Use a brand new license and people are right to be suspicous.
Licenses are like reading someone else's source code. They're bastard cousins of contracts
and contracts are complicated twisted things specifically engineered to try and screw the
other guy. This is a reason to avoid license proliferation and a reason to stick to what
is well understood. Legal language has consequences.
So the obvious question is why has Google chosen to add to the mix or start from scratch.
What are they up to? What is the motivation that already isn't encapsulated in one of the
pre-existing licenses.
A new license needs to be vetted just like any other legal language.
Re:This strikes me as misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
The OSI seems upset that someone has finally said "sorry, you're too arse-disabled to take seriously. You want to be taken seriously, get your shit together."
The licence is Free Software as far as the FSF and Debian are concerned.
seconded! (Score:1, Insightful)
What's funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Google's license for this software is just an approved BSD license + a narrow patent license. If it'd be open source without the patent license, I'm not at all sure why it wouldn't be open source with an added patent license which is along the spirit of the original license.
This controversy is STUPID. Next we'll hear bitter complaints about how PostgreSQL's not "open source."
Did any of you actually *read* the controversy (Score:3, Insightful)
OSI didn't ask for any of this.
Someone who wanted to start developing stuff on top of the library (who happens to be esr) asked for this.
Then some things were said, like "well we're not ready yet" but in a hurried and somewhat non-diplomatic manner.
Then the whole thing blew up just enough for the lid to leave the teapot by about a quarter of an inch before it settled back down.
There is no there there.
Re:This may come as a surprise (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, okay, they are God, but only because so many believe in them. It doesn't have to be that way.
Doesn't that make them Ori, rather than God? :P
Re:Kinda misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
2) We will want the bod list archives open for any discussions of webm. We are not comfortable with OSI being closed.
Why would an open source firm lack transparency?
Re:Did any of you actually *read* the controversy (Score:4, Insightful)
What pem said. The original summary above is full of hyperbole and epic levels of FUD. A thread on a mailing list elevated to the status of News. Sheesh. Slashdot editors, please use some discretion.
For those Slashdotters who want the executive summary, go read the LWN thread from 4 days ago: http://lwn.net/Articles/388883/ [lwn.net]
Re:seconded! (Score:4, Insightful)
Were we would be?
We would have no access to source, companies would feel free to use works with no giving back to the source and we would have a massive tragedy of the commons. Yeah, that sounds great.
Re:compatibilty (Score:3, Insightful)
What's funny is that the regular (modified) BSD-style license, which grants *no* patent license at all, is considered GPLv2 compatible. How can a license that grants you additional rights on top of the BSD license then be *in*compatible with the GPLv2? The brain boggles...
As soon as you bring up patent grant rights, I guess you potentially run afoul of Section 7 of the GPLv2 which references patents? The interaction between Google's (conditional on not suing Google) patent grant and Section 7 of GPLv2 is not obvious to me.
I actually don't see anything explicitly incompatible with the original GPL, which doesn't mention patent rights at all.
The GPLv2 is not well defined or well structured to deal with these patent-bomb laden areas like video encoding.
As for GPLv3 compatibility - too hard for a non-lawyer to figure out all the potential interactions there. The brain really boggles.
dilution of "open source" (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever the merits of this particular disagreement, the term "open source" is definitely getting diluted in the same way that "organic" and "innovative" have been diluted. I went to a symposium in LA last year about the governor's Free Digital Textbook Initiative [bbc.co.uk]. There was quite a mix of people there -- teachers, education bureaucrats, open-source software types, authors of free books, people from hardware companies, and people from traditional textbook publishing houses. Everyone was using "open source" like it was magic pixie dust, sprinkling it on everything to make it seem shinier and better. Pearson's rep referred to the consumable workbook it submitted as "free and open-source" -- actually it's just a PDF file that you can download and print, but that you can't redistribute, modify, etc. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's rep, when questioned about DRM, said that her company was committed to DRM, and envisioned its DRM'd materials being mixed and matched with open-source ones. Both said that they wanted to be service providers (think Red Hat), rather than just content providers (a la Microsoft) -- but, hey, they produce really great content, too. Apple and Dell's reps argued for open formats such as XML.
Part of the reason for the confusion is that people are confused about applying the term to anything other than computer software. When I've mentioned here on slashdot that I was the author of some open-source books, I've sometimes gotten reactions amounting to, "You're an idiot. You don't even know what open source means." This despite the fact that the books are under a GPL-style copyleft license (CC-BY-SA, same as Wikipedia) and their source code (written in a programming language called LaTeX) is openly available and free for redistribution and modification under that license. It sounds like there's similar confusion here because people aren't distinguishing clearly between the issue of WebM as an open format and the implementation of WebM in open-source software. Who the heck cares whether google's reference implementation is open source, as long as the format is openly defined and usable without paying patent royalties? The first implementations of html by NCSA weren't open source according to the modern meaning of the term, but html was certainly an open format.
Re:You want open? (Score:4, Insightful)
A "BSD" license is open.
Especially in the nether region, inviting anyone like Apple to exploit you without giving anything in return.
Re:Don't mix up source code and data format (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care if Google's VP8 library is not strictly speaking open source (or even proprietary), just as long as the WebM format is described in a precise way in a public document, with no patents forbiding me to implement a codec.
The problem is, given current US intellectual property laws, no one can say for certain that there as "no patents forbidding me to implement a codec". That is up to the legal process. Active people in the IP space say that all modern digital video compression methods are probably covered by someone's patent. You could hire your own lawyer to do due diligence to try to see if there are any patents applicable (and perhaps Google did this), but there could be hundreds of thousands of broadly worded patents to examine, and it isn't a 100% certain thing. And maybe a patent troll would come after you, or maybe not, and maybe you'd win in court, or maybe not, or maybe you'd just pay them off to go home.
I personally feel that there should be a method where ANSI-recognized standards have a "patent clearing" period. Perhaps all IP holders get 1-2 years after publishing of a standard by an ANSI-certified standard development organization, you either have to step up and register that your patent is relevant to the standard or you can not claim IP violation by the use of that standard.
I know the free/open software world would love patent-free audio/video compression, but those of us in the professional video industry would just like to know whose patents we might be using and how much it might cost us when we use a standard like H.264. I can tell you that the trolls keep coming for video compression standards over 10 years old, even today!
Re:You want open? (Score:4, Insightful)
A "BSD" license is open.
Especially in the nether region, inviting anyone like Apple to exploit you without giving anything in return.
And yet, for some reason, Apple gives back, anyway...
Re:seconded! (Score:1, Insightful)
Before GPL, the Inter-tubes were highly populated with BSD-licensed code. That was the era before developers became so self-absorbed.
In closing, it's a social thing, based on social attitudes that have been lost and need to be reignited. You think more openness would lead to (a bigger) tragedy, but that's only because you aren't buying into it. It's the chicken or egg again, and you're chicken.
FUD and ignorance (Score:1, Insightful)
Firstly, the new license Google is using for the project is one that's not been submitted to the Open Source Initiative for approval.
[sarcasm]Well, yeah, like that's never happened before.[/sarcasm]
As it stands it possibly can't be approved due to Google's ironic inclusion of a "field of use" restriction in the patent grant (which is restricted to "this implementation of VP8" rather than the more general grant in the Apache license from which the text started). That means WebM is not currently open source,
That's not a field-of-use restriction, and it's a restriction that exists in many other open source licenses as well, even the GPL: you don't get a patent grant in general, you get a patent grant for that implementation and all its derived code.
Secondly, the patent situation around WebM is unclear. Apple's Steve Jobs has previously claimed that the reason Apple does not support Ogg Theora as a video codec on the Mac is that, unlike H.264, Apple can't buy an indemnity to patent action for Theora.
H.264 doesn't come with "indemnity" either, it only comes with promises by other members of the consortium not to sue each other. It's an assumption that there are no other patents, but there is no guarantee.
One H.264 partisan has already asserted there's a patent problem.
Yeah, like that hasn't happened before either. The H.264 patent holders, just like Apple, have an interest in spreading FUD.
Wanting insurance isn't an accusation of infringement. It's just a desire for mitigation of risk in a world where software patents have gone out of control.
Apple can't get "insurance" for H.264 either (well, except from Lloyd's, but they can get that for anything.)
Despite their claims that WebM was been checked for patent risks when ON2 was acquired, Google has neither made its research available nor does it offer a patent indemnity.
Neither does H.264.
Thirdly, as codec consultant Rob Glidden points out, simply making the code for VP8 open source does not automatically make it an open standard.
No, but it's the most open standard there is, and the only thing that keeps it from being completely standard is companies like Apple refusing to support it and spreading FUD.
"When companies like Google ignore standards and go on their own in such important areas as video codec standards, they just undermine the very standards groups the open Web needs to thrive and grow."
There currently is no open video standard, there is only the pseudo-open H.264, which some companies have been pushing because it disadvantages open source.
We need open standards.
Yes, we do. And Apple is to be condemned for preventing the adoption of open standards for video.
"Contributing VP8 to a standards group with a strong patent disclosure policy would be a good corrective move; it would force lurking patent holders to come fully into the public."
Well, and if that makes sense, I'm sure they will do just that. However, it may not make sense if companies like Apple use a standards body simply for spreading FUD. And there's a good chance that they will do that.
Yet Google's do-it-all-ourselves mentality has made them forget or avoid addressing three very important issues - open source licensing, patent indemnity and open standardisation.
(1) Nobody gives you indemnity for any of the video formats.
(2) Google didn't do it themselves, they spent a lot of money on the best vendor of something they could open up.
(3) Standards bodies like ISO, ANSI, ECMA, and IEEE have become corrupted; companies like Microsoft and Apple are using them to obstruct open standards and push patented standards instead.
Working on solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this a library Google themselves have written? Why not just open it up and make it compatible with the GPL version in question? If they want to call it open source isn't that the easiest and fastest way to solve it? Do no evil, not do less evil
Re:Working on solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is with the GPL, not Google.
Google's license is BSD, EXCEPT for the one clause that says anyone can use it, UNLESS they try to assert patent rights over something in libvpx. It was a smart clause to have, and taking the teeth out of it would be a disservice to everyone, all to humor rabid GPL advocates who can't handle the real world.
yt (Score:1, Insightful)
The ONLY reason that Google use a new license is to avoid patent litigation from MPEG-LA or someone else.
The license said that if you filed a patent litigation against anyone using VP8, you'll be unable to use VP8 anymore. If you won't file patent litigations against VP8, you can use it for any purpose.
Since the software patent system is totally broken, Google is doing the right thing to defend.