Patent Pool to Thwart Open Source Codecs!
This was definetely not what I was planning to write about! We have had a lot of things happening lately, but they all have to wait in order to make room for this article that I found through Twitter!
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse in the world of software patents, a reliable source sent me this response from Steve Jobs about a patent pool that’s forming and aiming to nail the open source codecs projects. It’s enough to make the weak at heart go weak in the knees and stop working on open source projects.
Here is Steve Jobs’ response to the letter from Hugo Roy:
From: Steve Jobs
To: Hugo Roy
Subject: Re: Open letter to Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:21:17 -0700
All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.Sent from my iPad
You can read the story here!
Original letter sent to Steve Jobs