FRAND is no friend: How to make EU tech standards compatible with open source | Ars Technica UK: "Given this fact that FRAND is simply not compatible with open source, how did it come to pass that the European Commission should put FRAND licensing at the very heart of its new ICT standardisation strategy?
After my article about the apparent decision by the European Commission to shut open source out in this way, I managed to talk to someone senior who had been involved in the process. It took me about half an hour to get across why exactly FRAND licensing was incompatible with open source, but in the end the person I was talking to recognised that there was in fact a serious problem.
I've also heard through other channels that people within the Commission were rather taken aback by my analysis, since they too were not aware of the huge problem the new Digital Single Market policy would represent for free software. They were under the impression that the references to supporting open source elsewhere in that policy was enough.
This overlooks the fundamental role that licensing plays in open source, and naïvely assumes that things can somehow be tweaked to allow FRAND compatibility. But as I've described, that's simply not the case." 'via Blog this'
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