The JPEG group approved HD Photo as a new standard

AndyC wrote:



creditcard wrote: AndyC seems to be worried that someone would fork the library as a GPL library and make it better then Microsoft's own implementation. However one thing he is missing is that someone could make a GPL implementation and it could very well be better then Microsoft's implementation using the specs. I guess Microsoft missed an important loophole.

Ok, so you still don't get it. Let's try again:

If a reference implementation falls under a GPL license it becomes unusable to anyone not using the GPL. This makes it useless as a reference implementation.

Hence it needs to be protected against that and released under a more permissive license. Which is what Microsoft have done.

That's why the BSD license would be an ideal license.

Isn't Firefox licensed as MPL? What prevents them from implementing JPEG XR?

TimP wrote:


That's why the BSD license would be an ideal license.

Is there an echo in here?

Tom Servo wrote:

Isn't Firefox licensed as MPL? What prevents them from implementing JPEG XR?

Absolutely nothing. Especially if they want to go with their own  customized implementation.

PaoloM wrote:



Tom Servo wrote: Isn't Firefox licensed as MPL? What prevents them from implementing JPEG XR?

Absolutely nothing. Especially if they want to go with their own  customized implementation.

Well, Microsoft is obviously going to hammer this as soon as possible into IE, alone for driving adoption and since it's their own stuff, once it's fully made into a standard.

Mozilla has to jump once that happened.

Well, they'll never learn, will they?

creditcard wrote:


I don't know who is advocating Microsoft release a reference implementation under the GPL, certainly not me. I however, advocate licensing it under the BSD license, that way it can be used by any application, not just ones that are proprietary/closed source.

But the BSD license doesn't actually guarantee that. And while the BSD license may be considered "compatible" with the GPL, the GPL is most definitely not compatible with the spirit of the BSD license.

Of course, in an ideal world anyone who spotted a flaw in the code would share any fix under the BSD license too and all would be fine. Do you really think the Richard Stallman's of this world would do that if they knew the code was in Microsoft Office? Or would they take the opportunity to try and claim that Office needed to be released under GPL?

Tom Servo wrote:

Well, they'll never learn, will they?

The GPL zealots? No, they don't, you're right.

AndyC wrote:



TimP wrote:  That's why the BSD license would be an ideal license.

Is there an echo in here?

Yes, it seems you can't hear it. You say that if they fix a bug in a GPL'd fork, MS can't get at it. Are you that doubtful of Microsoft's talent being able to fix the problem on their own? Basically you're worried that GPL folks will do a better job of handling Microsoft's code for Microsoft's specification than Microsoft?

TimP wrote:


Yes, it seems you can't hear it. You say that if they fix a bug in a GPL'd fork, MS can't get at it. Are you that doubtful of Microsoft's talent being able to fix the problem on their own?

Imagine that "bug" was replacing a "less than" with a "less than or equals"

Now imagine it weren't just Microsoft, but hundreds of software vendors who had implemented it in non-GPL code. It's a very real issue and one that absolutely needs protecting against.