{"id":12628,"date":"2023-05-23T20:39:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/2023\/05\/23\/why-open-video-is-vital-for-open-source\/"},"modified":"2023-05-23T22:22:42","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T20:22:42","slug":"why-open-video-is-vital-for-open-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/2023\/05\/23\/why-open-video-is-vital-for-open-source\/","title":{"rendered":"Why open video Is vital For Open Source"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0news\u00a0that the European Commission\u2019s competition directorate (DG COMP) has decided not to conduct a full antitrust investigation into the Alliance for Open Media\u2019s (AOM) licensing policy is to be welcomed, especially for the\u00a0AV1 CODEC specification\u00a0(successor to the VP9 CODEC and intended to allow royalty-free, high-quality video streaming). It seems that whispering voices had falsely suggested the reciprocal licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs) in AOM\u2019s policy is somehow anti-competitive.<br \/>\nBut reciprocal patent licensing is very common in the software industry generally and Open Source in particular \u2013 it\u2019s part of the terms of the Apache License for example \u2013 so the accusation seemed far more likely to be projection by the SEP-dependent legacy industries of Europe. One useful insight into the whispers to which DG COMP responded can be seen in the\u00a0extra information\u00a0AOM has added to its\u00a0legal page\u00a0in response to the matter. The questions they address have such obvious and innocuous answers that only express sophistry could have been behind such questions, given the sophistication of the actors involved.<br \/>\nThis is all crucially important to Open Source software, and not just as an endorsement of reciprocal terms. While there are edge cases, generally\u00a0Open Source projects avoid standards which embed royalty-due patents, not primarily because of the royalties but because of the need to submit to the control implied by privately negotiating terms with the patent holders \u2013 an obviously anti-competitive aspect for any market entrant,\u00a0about which Europeans complain.<br \/>\nIt only takes one patent aggressor to rob everyone of viable Open Source video, so it seems entirely reasonable to scrupulously maintain hygiene by requiring any beneficiary of AV1 to commit to waiving royalties (and thus their negotiation). AOM is creating standards expressly intended to allow implementation by Open Source projects, so their terms are both rational and reasonable \u2026 unless you want to keep Open Source out of your cozy market.<br \/>\nThe clouds have not all dispersed. AOM\u2019s licensing is unfortunately based on a non-OSI-approved license (for excellent reasons but still an issue). Hopefully this will become more and more unfashionable as Open Source expands its reach. Also, significantly, there are hostile patent pools which, unfathomably and without evidence that their mountain of claims are actually essential, assert that the AV1 standards infringe patents in the pools.<br \/>\nBut this is good progress and underlines that the \u201creciprocal\u201d mechanisms so common in Open Source licenses are generally pro-competitive. \u00a0Perhaps the Commission will now move on to ask why such an obviously anti-competitive arrangement as standards bodies permitting royalty-due patents in their specifications is still tolerated?<br \/>\nThis article first appeared on Webmink in Draft.<br \/>\nImage it\u2019s not thieving if it\u2019s from the bin, right? by Simon Phipps.<br \/>\nThe post &lt;span class=&#8217;p-name&#8217;&gt;Why open video Is vital For Open Source&lt;\/span&gt; appeared first on Voices of Open Source.&#013;<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/51296452914_3027748602_h-1024x768-1.jpg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\">&#013;<br \/>\nSource: opensource.org&#013;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0news\u00a0that the European Commission\u2019s competition directorate (DG COMP) has decided not to conduct a full antitrust investigation into the Alliance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":12629,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12630,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12628\/revisions\/12630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plus.maciejpiasecki.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}