Re: What is the "open web" ?

Mark Watson:
>> More precise would be referring to the Open Source Definition
>> (http://opensource.org/docs/osd) and the list of OSI-approved licenses
>> (http://opensource.org/licenses).
> 
> I understood that not all those licenses would qualify as 'FOSS'. Am I
> using the term FOSS incorrectly ?

In my understanding the "and" in "Free and Open Source Software" can be
considered to unite the two sets. But as far as I am aware the two sets
are the same. I am not even aware of a current borderline case. The "F"
in FOSS is mentioned to stress that the Free software community is an
important part of the broader FOSS community. Not the whole Open Source
community shares all the views of the FSF but it is considered to be
part of the same big family.

I would also like to point out that not only the FSF but also Simon
Phipps, the current president of the OSI, since many years publicly
opposes DRM. Here is an older article:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060128181323201:

He also publicly opposed EME.

Cheers,
Andreas
---

>> 15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison
>> Published on April 29, 2013
>> Written by Michael Larabel
>> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_nvidia_15way&num=1
>>
>> AMD Releases Open-Source UVD Video Support
>> Published on April 02, 2013
>> Written by Fatima Sheremetyeva
>> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_opensource_uvd&num=1
> 
> Nevertheless, the hardware itself and the firmware running I it are
> proprietary.

I am not sure about the firmware.

> I am trying to understand where people draw the line I
> terms of functionality that is ok to expose on the open web. It seems
> in the case of graphics hardware, if the hardware is widely available
> off-the-shelf and can be made using open source drivers to work on
> multiple platforms and support a standard API (in this case OpenGL),
> then this is ok. But maybe I'm wrong there ?

These are not necessarily black and white decisions. There generally is
no problem when complete and correct documentation of the graphics
hardware is available to all Open Source developers. Problems begin when
such documentation does not exist or can only be accessed after signing
an NDA. Problems also exist when the documentation is incomplete and
closed source developers are provided with additional information.

Graphics hardware for which complete documentation is available to the
Open Source community would not be a fundamental problem even if no Open
Source code of a hardware driver is provided by the manufacturer.

I can see potential problems if a manufacturer implements something in
hardware which so far has usually been implemented in software with the
intention to avoid implications of Open Source implementations.

There might be additional issues when DRM is involved.

Cheers,
Andreas

Received on Monday, 3 June 2013 04:31:07 UTC