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Per-seat codec licensing for Raspberry Pi

morgaine

I was quite disappointed by the news of additional optional licensing costs for Pi, announced in this  RPF blog article, "New video features! MPEG-2 and VC-1 decode, H.264 encode, CEC support"  -- http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1839 .  The costs are not high, but the principles involved are worrying.

 

These optional codec licenses are being sold tied to an individual Pi's serial number, so this is what's known as "per-seat licensing" in the education and commercial worlds.  Not only does it inflate the effective cost of Pi by some additional amount, but it is not portable from Pi to Pi.  That is especially bad news for hardware enthusiasts who inevitably take risks with their Pi, since it would appear that they will not be able to move this license to another Pi board.

 

The whole idea of adding restricted codec licenses to an educational product seems very misguided to me.  It's not contributing to the Pi's goal of education in the slightest, and it introduces the horrid issue of software patents which have a very chilling effect on innovation, education, and research.

 

Summary view:  the Pi is becoming more closed instead of more open.

 

Morgaine.

  • in reply to jdavidgea

    I'm not sure that there's much of an argument to be made either way, since it's clearly both at the same time.

     

    It's a commercial product with a very low profit margin for the manufacturing partners --- their main "profit" is in gaining colossal exposure and exclusive standing far beyond anything that they could have dreamed or paid for.  Nobody else can gain entry to this exclusive club.  Opportunities like this are more rare than hens' teeth, and their competitors in the distribution industry have been left in the dust.  It's a wonderful feather in their cap.

     

    But on the other hand it's not a commercial product in the normal sense.  The partners are not free to set their own price points, and they are not free to modify the design independently and still call it "Raspberry Pi" to remain on the gravy train, and they are getting a mountain of flak stemming from the design and community relations issues.  These things have to be subtracted from the previous plus points, and their ability to influence them is far less than for a normal commercial product which they could drop instantly without much angst.

     

    Plus of course the whole purpose of Pi is to open the doors of technical interest to a whole new generation of budding engineers, a highly worthwhile goal but not exactly a balance sheet item.  The latter must be really hard to justify to the beancounters, yet for those who can look beyond current ledger pages, it's clearly the right thing to do.

     

    So ... "it's complicated". image

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to jdavidgea

    I

    José David Gea Esteban wrote:

    I'm waiting any copy of this made with an AllWinner chip or similar. Even if it's made as a commercial product I bet it would be 10 times better than what the RaspberryPi Foundation is offering.

     

    I've been following the Cubieboard project. It's nice and seems to cover much of the holes the RaspberryPi isn't kind to fullfil. It's a step in the direction to have better commercial products to really learn or use.