Royalties for free software? [LWN.net]

Royalties for free software?

Posted Jun 25, 2008 19:47 UTC (Wed) by osma (subscriber, #6912)
Parent article: Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Thanks a lot for the excellent - and extremely timely - article. Just one question, which
baffled me when I saw this in the morning newspaper as well:

If all of the software is going to be published under an open license (Eclipse), what does the
$1500 membership payment pay for? You state (just like the newspaper) that it allows for
royalty-free use of the platform, but why is this necessary, if the code is as open as
claimed?

Are there patents that must be licensed in addition to the code? 

Is this a temporary arrangement for the next two years, during which not all of the code will
be released under the open license?

Or is there still some closed code which forms an essential part of the Symbian platform?

Of course, $1500 per year is probably peanuts for any company that sells mobile phones.
However, there could be other interesting uses of the platform beyond phones, for example
projects like OpenMoko or future "learning devices" similar to OLPC XO-2 or Nintendo DS, for
which the initial fee could be an issue. Not that Linux wouldn't be a good choice, but having
other open alternatives is always nice.

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Royalties for free software?

Posted Jun 25, 2008 20:53 UTC (Wed) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link]

If all of the software is going to be published under an open license (Eclipse), what does the $1500 membership payment pay for?

I wondered the same thing, including whether it was a two-year-only restriction. But another possibility is that they plan to keep a fairly tight hold on the official version (i.e., more cathedral than bazaar), in which case the $1500 might buy you early/behind-the-scenes access to upcoming snapshots. I haven't followed Nokia's existing open-source efforts very closely, so I don't know if that's likely or not. But in my experience, embedded software development tends to be somewhat more controlled/constrained than software development in other areas is.

Greg

Royalties for free software?

Posted Jun 25, 2008 21:08 UTC (Wed) by Jonno (subscriber, #49613) [Link]

My, purely speculative, thought is that it would give you the right to 
use "Symbian", rather than your own operating system built from Symbian 
sources.

That is, you pay for the brand name and associated compability guarantee. 
Similar to how (most) Java source code now is open source, but you still 
need a license to offer a "Java" solution.

Royalties for free software?

Posted Jun 26, 2008 21:25 UTC (Thu) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link]

Another possibility is that the Symbian Foundation membership gives you voting rights in some
form of ruling board the foundation will establish.

I'd imagine that even though it is open source, a such a huge and complex code base will be
maintained by a cathedral - mainly in the form of nokia employees - taking development
directions from the foundation. At least for the nearest couple of years.

As far as I have understood the EPL, it contains a patent retailiation clause, and requires
that you license patents for the code you release under it. So I do not believe the membership
fee has anything to do with patent licensing.

Royalties for free software?

Posted Jun 28, 2008 9:10 UTC (Sat) by henning (subscriber, #13406) [Link]

Take a look at the symbian foundation whitepaper PDF (p6), the anual membership fee will buy you some voting rights and also the possibility to distribute the code commercially. This will be probably not possible as part of the free developer program.