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| Authored by: tiger99 on Monday, October 01 2012 @ 08:28 AM EDT |
| Link The usual
suspects, MPEG-2 and the Vile Monopoly's VC-1. But at least H.264 encoding is
included in the cost of the hardware. The sums of money involved in acquiring
the codecs are quite modest, but it is in my opinion vile and nasty of the
licensees to charge for them, considering the target market of the Pi. Compare
that to the generosity of people like Broadcom to the project. They helped by
allowing them to have a proportion of their chipset usage, at cost. I think
other large companies have given at least passive help too. But if you want
these codecs on any other Linux machine, not procured via the Raspberry Pi
foundation, you will find out exactly what FRAND usually means, i.e. you can not
have the codecs. Full marks to the foundation for getting us these codecs, of
course. The problem is not of their making, and they have been able to resolve
it for their very cost-effective product, at least. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: stegu on Monday, October 01 2012 @ 11:34 AM EDT |
You misunderstand what "non-discriminatory" refers to.
FRAND is a terminology used for standards-essential
patents, those that are required to implement an
open standard for e.g. data communication.
It is not a case of charging everyone an equal amount
to use the standard. That is what is referred to by
"fair", the F in FRAND. The ND for "non-discriminatory"
refers to the requirement that all market actors
should be able to use a standard in their software
and hardware. Nobody should be blocked from using it.
A standard that cannot be implemented in free
software unless the author agrees to pay a license
that is based on the number of copies that are
distributed is discriminatory against free software.
FRAND terms for free software would certainly not
be based on a percentage of sales, as that would
give the patent holders nothing. They could go for,
say, $0.05 per copy of a video player, which seems
reasonable until you realize that it is the author
and distributor of the software that is supposed to
pay the license. The cost would quickly become
unreasonable if the software became popular and
got a millon downloads. Patent hoarders hate free
software, and free software authors hate FRAND terms
for standards-essential patents. They don't mix.
An FRAND patent-encumbered standard is really unfit
to be called an open standard. Definitions differ when
this is debated, because it is a highly contested
subject right now, but many government recommendations
have stated something akin to "an open standard should
be freely implementable by anyone", implying
royalty-free, RF, terms for a standard to be
named "open" and receive endorsement by government
initiatives. Heavy lobbying from market dinosaurs
have subverted some of these recommendations to
make it possible for them to create closed standards,
standards that are impossible to support in free
software and excludes a large and important part
of the software industry, but this is very much
an ongoing battle.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PJ on Monday, October 01 2012 @ 01:07 PM EDT |
Um. The solution is zero price for standards.
That's the direction Europe is going, by the
way, so don't bother saying that it's a pipe
dream.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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