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

Mon Nov 12 03:01:38 UTC 2018

Larry, Dave Rudin is in the group of supporters I meet with, and we've
discussed this. Are the W3C meetings you mentioned the ones I  attended? I
lost support after I left HP.

Thanks

Bruce

On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 1:02 PM Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> Bruce,
>
>
>
> I support your efforts for open standards and royalty-free patents.
> However, a couple of warnings for OSI over-reach in these areas. You are
> not alone. Please incorporate our own previous efforts, with the support of
> attorneys from many software companies and foundations, toward those goals.
> This can be a community effort.
>
>
>
> 1. The very term "open standards" causes diarrhea in some quarters. One of
> Linux Foundations' attorneys, for example, once irately walked out of my
> talk on that subject because his law firm supports RAND "for some
> standards." The standards organization OASIS had to allow all of
> "royalty-free," "RAND" and "FRAND" for their standards, although most of
> their standards are now royalty-free anyway. And IETF refuses to define the
> term at all, although they require patent notices from contributors, for
> whatever that may be worth.  I know from personal experience that standards
> participants are often afraid of free donations of their patents. This is a
> world-wide issue. I look forward to your report about your own interactions
> with those folks.
>
>
>
> 2. The term "royalty-free patents" was the subject of several years'
> debate at W3C. I was then an invited expert from OSI to advocate for the
> open source community. We won a great patent license model for open
> standards. It has since been widely accepted by the software industry. Its *10-item
> definition of royalty-free patent licenses* was written by our W3C
> committee with excellent advice from some of the attorneys on this
> license-discuss@ list from those companies. We are all proud! I recommend
> that model for incorporation – in some way, perhaps by reference – with the
> OSD.
>
>
>
> 3. I then worked for several years with David Rudin from Microsoft and
> representatives from others in the software and open source communities in
> the Open Web Foundation (OWF). Our "open specification" licenses, which
> incorporated the best from the OSD and the W3C definitions, are posted on
> that website. Please feel free to add us as supporters for your own OSI
> efforts.
>
>
>
> I'll take the flak from that irate attorney a few years ago by using this
> phrase: "We want open standards, with royalty-free patents, for open source
> software."
>
>
>
> /Larry
>
>
>
> P.S. You said you didn't want to participate in this discussion "when it
> features conflation of the license under consideration with other
> licenses." That is the entire purpose of "license-discuss@" rather than
> "license-review@". I am obeying Simon Phipps and others when I moved this
> discussion here. Indeed, it is a great place to discuss open standards,
> royalty-free patents, and lots of open source software issues, before OSI
> acts on its own.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> *On
> Behalf Of *Bruce Perens
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 10, 2018 12:56 AM
> *To:* license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
> *Subject:* Re: [License-discuss] Open source software licenses and the OSD
>
>
>
> 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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