OSI President Questions WebM Patent License Compatibility with Open Source 37
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."
Re:Go with what you can get. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure. But to have any chance, the tech needs three things:
1. It has to be very good indeed. At least as good as the existing offerings. Open source can do this - the existance of x264 shows this is true - but starting over from scratch? That's a massive project.
2. It has to be patent-proof. That's just not possible. No way. Patents are so broad now, it'd be impossible not to violate a lot of them without even knowing about them. That's why we need google: Their big money and legal muscle let them fight the legal battle.
3. It has to be supported by at least one major player, who has the clout to get players widely available. Not just on PCs, but embedded codecs on phones and tablets too. Distributed with browsers or operating systems, so my mother who has no idea what 'codec' means can still watch her silly dog videos on the internet.
To ask for all that, and full ideological compliance too, is just asking too much. Not going to happen.