Royalty Free

Software freedom doesn't require zero price for a copy of the specification describing how to write software. But it does require zero royalties for a license to those patent claims necessary to make, use, and sell open source implementations of that software. A price other than zero for the right to make copies conflicts directly with Open Source Principle # 2.

Therefore, the only reasonable royalty for a patent license for an open standard that can be implemented in open source is zero. The term of art for such a license is royalty free .

Very few of the reasonable and nondiscriminatory patent licenses for industry standards actually charge a royalty. As a practical matter, the word reasonable mostly means zero . But not always, and when a license requires payment of a royalty, it poses a problem for open source software developers who can't recover that royalty through license fees.

It would be a mistake, though, to just focus on price. As I have described throughout this book, there are many other characteristics of open source software that matter much more, such as the right to create derivative works. An open standard patent license that is compatible with open source must include more than a promise of a zero royalty.

The term royalty free is now potentially as confusing as the term free was for software. Perhaps it would be better if we called standards that satisfy the W3C Royalty-Free Patent License requirements open standards ?