On Mar 7, 2016, at 12:55 PM, Justin Couch <jus...@vlc.com.au> wrote: > On 7/03/2016 12:09 PM, Mark Newton wrote: > >> It is not possible for a consumer to vote with their wallet, because no >> matter where they send their money, FLARM skims the cream. >> >> It isn’t a competitive market, it’s a restraint of trade. > > Not a good argument to make. This exact same scenario plays out all over the > world - even with ISO standards.
Protecting the text of a standard under copyright and making it purchasable, is not the same thing as making the standard unimplementable without paying license fees, and you know it. Reputable standards bodies insist on open royalty free patent licensing these days. The ones that don’t are slowly marginalizing themselves. And besides: The FLARM line protocol is neither patented nor secret. Everyone already knows how it works, the only thing that makes it unimplementable is a retrofitted crypto system. > If you want have a look at a good example, see the various MPEG standards and > licensing those (and thus free to air digital TV). I can write an MPEG implementation which interoperates with everyone else’s MPEG streams and distribute it in competition with other MPEG implementations, by following the text of the standard. I cannot do that with FLARM. I know what the line protocol looks like, but I don’t have the private keys, so I can’t interoperate. > Even government-mandated broadcast specs require something that must be > licensed from 3rd parties. Yes: Legislated monopolies behave monopolistically: Huge news, film at 11. - mark _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list Aus-soaring@lists.base64.com.au http://lists.base64.com.au/listinfo/aus-soaring
