Thread: Is this what's holding back Linux and OSS in general?
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Bundyo is offline Bundyo
2008-05-07 , 08:08
Posts: 4,708 | Thanked: 4,649 times | Joined on Oct 2007 @ Bulgaria
#123
Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
So in practice, there are 3 types of specifications:
-"closed", third parties have to reverse engineer the specs, they may be sued at any moment for patent infringement, compatibility may be broken at any moment.
-"open": third parties can get a description of the specs, patent licensing is easy and non-discriminatory, a good level of compatibility is insured.
-"free": same as "open" without the patents and the costs.
I always thought it was the other way round - open as in open source and free as in not payed for, but still closed.

As for the Youtube - it was available for the iPhone as an internal application from the first update i think. I doubt Google was the only side interested in this deal - face it, iPhone will be a lesser hit if there was no Youtube on it. Don't know who first gave the idea, but i'm sure there is a fat contract to protect the interests of both sides.