this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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Parent is right though. Unix being proprietary is why the GNU project was started, and why the Linux kernel and BSDs rose above.
Hopefully HDMI being proprietary leads to others creating an alternative, open standard which eventually can push HDMI to open up or push it out.
Isn't that what DisplayPort is? At least that is what Dell is claiming.
VESA requires an annual membership fee to access the DP standard. Perhaps that's fine but that makes regular people unable to "open" the door to the standard. ~~VESA has in the past~~ ~~claimed implementing DP can mean you own them royalty fees~~ ~~but they apparently backed down from that.~~
Implementation of Content ""Protection"" isn't in the spirit of an open standard to me, rather the opposite. Why have an open standard if not to weed-out corporate anti-features from existence for the benefit of the users?
Alright this sent me down a rabbit hole so I'm going to try to and summarize really quickly.
1^st^, VESA requires a membership but in reality you need a company that has a vested interest in what VESA does. So you have to pay a huge due to be apart of it. This is quite BS according to me, the fact that they can do this and still claim to be an open standard. Source
2^nd^, VESA never tried to implement a royalty based off the Display Port Standard. The company that did that was MPEG LA, LLC, they aren't affiliated with VESA. Rather this company is a patent pool company that attempted to enforce their clients (such as Sony) licensing fees. They seemed to have backed off of this back in 2016 as the last patent used was for the Display Port Standard 1.4. Source
3^rd^ Content Protection was necessary if you want wide spread adoption. Companies aren't going to want to do business with you if you allow for their IP to be ripped. As well, VESA is just a collection of companies that have voting shares in the company. So those corporate features are just par for the course.
Corporate Protection in MY hardware is a hill I'd die on, wide spread adoption be damned if not possible without it.
indeed, parent's conflation of C64 and *nix threw me off (as I guess it did others), but your comment helps to put it into perspective.
proprietary can drive FLOSS innovation, but its so hard to get around proprietary entrenchment - especially wrt consumer facing tech.