Re: Nokia and Ogg

Re: Nokia and Ogg

Posted Mar 15, 2008 6:00 UTC (Sat) by ldo (subscriber, #40946)
In reply to: Software patents and encumbered formats by JoeBuck
Parent article: Nokia on its relationship with the open source community

As I understand it, Nokia, and others, are worried that Ogg might not really be free. Yes, as far as we know there are no patents to be infringed, but Microsoft recently got burned for a lot of money over MP3 patents, even though it had paid up in full to the MP3 patent consortium.

So a closed-source vendor got burned. Yes, Open Source is vulnerable, too, but so is all software, as your example indicates.

What can the Ogg folks, or other open-source folks, do about it? Nothing. The problem is with software patents in general. Get rid of those, and the problem goes away. Why should software be the only product in the world that benefits from two kinds of legal protection, both copyright and patent?

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"copyright and patent"

and contract law.