ARTICLE - ESR gives up on Fedora

[Ben Scott]

On 2/22/07, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
>>   Oh, please.  Do you really think Thomson is going to agree to
>> license for perpetual unlimited distribution to other parties?  If
>> they did, then *everyone else* could use the same license, and their
>> *entire revenue stream* from MP3 would evaporate.  Don't be stupid; it
>> doesn't become you.
>
> I'm telling you that yes, they do license it in this manner ...

  They do destroy their revenue stream?  Funny, I seem to recall that
you still needed to buy the patent rights.

> ... depending on the primary purpose of the applications.  As in, if it's
> an end use application, or built into something else.

  Exactly.  If I'm writing some stupid closed-source MP3 playback
program for the Commodore 64 that I'm going to sell for $12.95 a pop,
then they'll talk for $50K.  But they're not going to give away the
farm for that amount.

> An end use application would be something along the lines of a
> simple MP3 player.

  And *not* a perpetual, redistributable license for anyone anywhere
to implement an MP3 player.

> Note the distinct lack of a lump-sum payment for an MP3 *encoder* ...

  I'm not talking about encoders.  Maybe maddog was.  I'm not.  Still aren't.

> But the only reason why they're looking at such a large judgment ...

  No.  Go RTFA again.  Microsoft says they've *already* paid
*Fraunhofer* $16,000,000 for their license.  (Thomson Multimedia and
Fraunhofer IIS are related in some fashion I've never understood.)
That payment had nothing to do with the Lucent court battle.  I'm
guessing that price was arrived at because (1) Microsoft can afford
it, but mainly (2) because they ship huge unit volumes which (as you
note) anyone can use.  Thomson knew that others would use the
Microsoft libraries, thus eating into their revenue stream.  So the
price was considerably higher.

  Go ahead and send the email to Thomson's licensing team, asking if
you can buy an unlimited redistributable perpetual license for open
source software for $50,000.  If you can get them to agree to that, I
will personally put up the $50,000 payment myself.

-- Ben