Changes for page Bruce Perens, 2019

Last modified by Patrick Masson on 2019/03/03 03:05

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From version < 3.1 >
edited by Bruce Perens
on 2019/02/20 18:41
To version < 4.1 >
edited by Bruce Perens
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5 5  **I am presently the Standards Chair of the Open Source Initiative.** In this role I am defending Open Source in a pretty big fight that has developed because Open Source has taken a significant role in the development of 5G mobile telephony standards. Big companies want the standards groups to enforce patent royalties on their contributions to new standards and are promoting that Open Source is compatible with patent royalties. The main threat is that standards organizations, having established a royalty policy applied to Open Source, would start applying royalties to their ICT standards as well, encumbering Open Source everywhere. The big companies fight dirty with fake "research" reports documenting the compatibility of Open Source and patent royalties, and efforts to discredit OSI, its president Simon Phipps, and other Open Source and Free Software organizations and people. OSI's standards committee has financial support from about a dozen corporations (even Microsoft - how things have changed!) which because of our non-profit status may support the effort, but not make decisions. We are increasing OSI's involvement in standards organizations worldwide. I first worked on standards policy as a member of the W3C patent policy board in 2003-2004. We achieved a royalty-free policy that was a critical decision for the entire web.
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7 -**I am also heavily involved in OSI's license approval committee.** This is a difficult task that not many people in the world, even most of the OSI directors, want to be involved in. The license approval committee this year has been faced with pressure from companies to change the paradigm of Open Source to allow restrictions on use, and to allow Open Source licenses to encumber other programs. I have helped to resist these efforts because they would be a bad deal for the average Open Source user and developer, increasing the legal load on passive users of Open Source (who just use, and don't modify the program) and making some businesses such as SaaS untenable for anyone but the licensor of a program.
7 +**I am also heavily involved in OSI's license approval committee.** This is a difficult task that not many people in the world, even most of the OSI directors, want to be involved in. The license approval committee this year has been faced with pressure from companies to change the paradigm of Open Source to allow restrictions on use, and to allow Open Source licenses to encumber other unrelated programs on the system. I have helped to resist these efforts because they would be a bad deal for the average Open Source user and developer, increasing the legal load on passive users of Open Source (who just use, and don't modify the program) and making some businesses such as SaaS untenable for anyone but the licensor of a program.
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9 9  However, people and companies can use any license they like, //as long as they don't call it Open Source.// Thus, I have helped the companies that are looking for a less-than-Open-Source license to standardize on one license and to find a brand that won't confuse anyone that their license is an Open Source one. Giving them a sane escape was better than creating conflict.
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