On Thursday 20 May 2010 12:06:08 jtd wrote: > On Thursday 20 May 2010 02:57:49 Pranesh Prakash wrote: > > All laws, rules, regulations are as only good as their > > mplementation. This will be no exception. > > > > On Wednesday 19 May 2010 11:42 PM, Nagarjuna G wrote: > > > The issue that remains is: as per the definition of open > > > standards adopted by the FOSS community, FRAND or RAND should > > > not exist. Currently if this policy is adopted, FRAND and RAND > > > condition may now become part of open standards definition > > > within Indian legal regime. This is a dilution. > > > > The relevant part of the clause is clearly an exception: "If such > > Standards are not found feasible then in the wider public > > interest". It goes on to state that FRAND and RAND "with no > > payment" could be considered. > > > > Apart from semantics, F/RAND + no payments (with the standard > > disclaimers of being irrevocable, etc.) = Royalty-Free. > > Not quite. This RAND / FRAND clause is a particular cause of grief. > Subclauses in RAND which cause problems > 1) The licensor insisting on individual permission for > distribution. It is a most effective block against FOSS. The > erstwhile Sun Java licence > 2) Free for non commercial use. H264 / MP4 > > There could well be other conditions which work against FLOSS.
I am acutely aware of the issues of RAND FRAND due to the mentioned H264 MP4. You can freely distribute H264 MP4 codecs subject to your distribution being non commercial. Now that itself is bad. But it gets worse. I cant bundle with hardware, without obtaining a licence. Nor can i offer a service which even tenuously links my revenue to the mp4 h264 content. So it is FRAND except for conditions which are essentially aimed at stifling competition. Ofcourse I use ogg theora encoding which is just fine as long as the customer uses my equipment. He cannot however operate with other equipments. So now interoperability is a casualty. Both the above, competition and interoperability are the avowed goals of standardisation. Both are very neatly hobbled by RAND FRAND from the real competition - FLOSS. My exposing customers to these "subtleties" leaves them shocked by the fact that they has paid top dollars for trapping themslves. That however does not change the fact that i cant sell to many such customers, until their equipment conks out. Some of the reasons why google spent $104 Million on the vp6 codecs and opened them. The alternatives were severely hobbling their business model. 104 million will actually cost them pico pennies per ad on youtube. -- Rgds JTD _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
