[Fwd: Re: What would work instead of the MXM public license?]

[Carlo Piana]

Bruce Perens ha scritto:
>
>> The point is that a strong copyleft license has many
>> downsides in the standardization process, because the reference code
>> cannot be put into a proprietary derivative as mandated by the
>> neutrality of the standard making process.
> This is why I suggested that you dual-license the reference code.

The dual licensing is quite complicated to manage, we are speaking of a
variety of patent holders and copyright holders, not necessarily the
same set includes both. ISO/IEC does not want to interfere on this, just
to set the minimal rules. But I can surely investigate if this is an
opportunity.


>> The same neutrality that
>> would vouch for mandating a zero royalty RAND conditions,
> It is reassuring to see that more national declarations, especially in
> Europe, recognize that RF is a necessary component of an Open Standard.

Indeed! EIN 2.0 is highly welcomed even by massive patent holders (see
at http://www.ecis.eu).

>
> Are you able to further discuss the motivation of the contributors? Do
> they really wish to gain a revenue from use of the patents _as
> exercised to implement the standard_, or do they simply wish to
> protect their ability to charge royalties for other uses of the
> patents? In the W3C patent process that Larry Rosen and I contributed
> to, there is a patent grant only to the extent that the patent is used
> to implement the standard. Other uses of the patent, including in the
> same software, need not be royalty-free.

>From my experience in licensing MPEG 2 and 4 parts, they actually charge
for implementations of the standard, through patent pooling. There is a
not irrelevant revenue from this stream, as far as I can tell. Many of
the contributors are also implementers as well as big market players in
hardware and/or software; others -- like the Fraunhofer institute for
Mp3 -- are just technology providers. Others have been relegated to very
small market shares (or expelled from it) over the years, and survived
only through the licensing stream (the Italian consumer electronic
industry is quite an example). I am *not* directly advising any of them,
though, as I assist their licensees. Actually, I have not even
investigated who the members of WG11 currently are and who is an active
party of the MXM standardization (apart from a couple of usual
suspects), but being it an "open" process, they can vary.

With best regards,

Carlo

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