[License-discuss] Open source software licenses and the OSD

[Bruce Perens]

Nicholas,

No problem. OSI is fighting in the standards arena and the EU with very
well-funded entities that insist that Open Source is only about copyright
and wish to assert their royalties on standard-essential patents when there
is an Open Source implementation. The way they have gone about it would
astound you, but we'll save that for another forum. Freedom is not just
about copyright, and any time someone seems to imply that OSI or the OSD is
just about copyright, I'll push back, even if that implication wasn't
really their intent.

I am not otherwise participating in a lot of this discussion when it
features conflation of the license under consideration with other licenses
authored by the discussion participants. I understand the authors are upset
about those licenses, this just isn't the place.

I thought Bradley had good points, though.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Fri, Nov 9, 2018 at 4:15 PM Nicholas Matthew Neft Weinstock <
nweinsto at qti.qualcomm.com> wrote:

> Hi Bruce,
>
>
>
> I’m sorry, I think there’s a disconnect.
>
>
>
> I read Larry’s statement to be about the definition of Open Source
> Software, but you’re referring to standards and patents in standards.  I
> didn’t intend to get into a discussion of standards.
>
>
>
> I don’t have a problem with Open Source Licenses that have a royalty-free
> Patent license as one of the license grants, and therefore requires a
> royalty-free Patent license from Contributors.  This makes complete sense.
> I’m simply saying that it’s impractical to expect a project maintainer to
> conclusively state that * nobody* has royalty-bearing claims.  For
> Patents and Trademarks, at most, they can only make that claim about
> Contributors’ claims.
>
>
>
> It wouldn’t be fair for Disney to contribute a picture of Mickey Mouse to
> a project and then sue for Trademark violation.  But if a random
> Contributor adds a picture of Mickey Mouse to a project, Disney can still
> enforce their Trademark.
>
>
>
> An interesting example of this (for Patents) is the Opus codec.  If you
> look at the bottom of their license page (http://opus-codec.org/license/),
> they indicate that they actually made the effort to have outside counsel
> evaluate potential 3rd party patents, and provide the results.  How many
> Open Source projects would be willing to do this, let alone have the
> financial backing to afford it?  Or conduct a worldwide search of
> registered Trademarks?  And even in the case of Opus, they only cite
> analysis of patents disclosed by four companies to the associated standards
> organization (IETF).  What if there are other companies with (possibly)
> relevant patents that didn’t make disclosures to the IETF?  What if someone
> contributed a picture of the cartoon penguin to use as the codec’s mascot?
>
>
>
> On the other hand, an open source project can make the claim that there
> are no royalty-bearing Copyright claims, because the only Copyright claims
> covering the project are from Contributors.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Bruce Perens wrote:
>
> I am the standards chair of OSI. We are indeed concerned with patents in
> standards, and we spend a lot of time and money on the issue. We assert
> that the OSD terms apply to patents as well as copyright.
>
>
>
>     Thanks
>
>
>
>     Bruce
>
>
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>
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>
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