Freedom From Relevance

John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation, responding to Steve Jobs’s “Thoughts on Flash”:

H.264, despite Jobs’s claim, is not a free standard — patents necessary to implement it are held by a group that requires all users to agree to a license with restrictive terms.

Jobs never said H.264 was a “free” standard. He said it was an open standard. Not all open standards are free.

Sullivan is more or less arguing the FSF party line, that both Apple and Adobe are unethical because both are promoting things that aren’t free-as-in-freedom. That’s great. So what mobile phone should an FSF devotee buy? Good luck with that.

★ Sunday, 2 May 2010