13 Jan
2004
13 Jan
'04
10:52 p.m.
On Tuesday 13 January 2004 18:09, Marek Peteraj and Daniel James
<daniel(a)linuxaudio.org> wrote:
WHOA! Down boys, down... :)
First, for the innocent bystanders to this thread, the discussion is about the
following:
http://www.linuxaudio.org/en
It looks to be an interesting approach. As I understand it, consortia in the
past have had two primary reasons for being:
1) LICENSING -- It's fairly common for organizations in a consortium to
cross-license the rights to various technologies to each other. While, as
Open Source / Libre developers, *code* licensing is is basically a done deal,
the same can not be said for issues of *patent* licensing. While the
LinuxAudio.org policy does not go so far as to actually cross-license patents
between members, I think it does seek to provide some sort of framework in
which to mediate disputes over such matters independently of lawyers and the
legal system, particularly in the area of reverse engineering. See Policy
Point #6. As such, I think that is a potentially valuable benefit of
membership.
2) ANTI-TRUST -- Such "open to all" consortia/trade groups have also
traditionally been employed as a platform for discussion and implementation
of industry-wide initiatives that could otherwise be enjoined by anti-trust
law. I believe that this aspect was throughly discussed here a few months
back in the thread concerning the MMA.
That said, I do sense a little bit of undue haste in the launch of this
organization. I only became aware of it myself about a week ago, at which
time active debate concerning some of the core Policy Points was still going
on, debate that resulted in significant change to the wording of at least one
of those points. I think that for an initiative of this sort to succeed,
community consensus -- from both commercial companies *and* part time
developers -- is key. LAD would indeed seem to be one of the natural fora in
which to seek this consensus.
Cheers!
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Director of Broadcast Software Development |
| | Salem Radio Labs |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten |
| your aim. |
| -- George Santayana |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
I hope we can
stop this childish attitude and actually get some work
done (this is usually the moment when people start to disappear).
So keeping such projects confidential until "ready", and not accepting a
community place although it's been here from 1997 or so isn't childish?