[Rydberg, Johan]
The UEFI FAQ states the following:
Q:Is there a charge to use the specification?
A:Not for the specification itself. The Promoters of UEFI have agreed
that any IP needed to implement the specification will be made available
on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
Q:Can anyone build their own Unified EFI implementations?
A:Yes. UEFI expect BIOS vendors, OS vendors and add-in card
vendors to all implement products based on the Unified EFI
Specification.
But when you decide to download the specification, you have to agree
to become an adopting member of the forum to implement the
specification.
I think that gives double messages.
[Doran, Mark] Well, I'm sorry you feel that's an inhibiter. I know when
we talked about the language there the hope was to make it clear that
the Forum wants to encourage adoption and diversity of implementations.
That you took the complete opposite of that intent from what was written
is definitely not a good thing :( Adoption membership gives you a
license to the spec. The form of that license is intended to help make
it possible for anyone to implement while ensuring that any one
implementer can't go after all the other implementers if they have some
IP that the reads on the spec and that the Forum was not aware of when
the spec was written down. In other words, the agreement is meant to
help protect the ability of any and all Adopters to implement the spec
without concern that IP claims may come along from who-knows-where after
they do their work. The intent was to have this be a benefit to
Adopters as a collection not to make people think twice about becoming
an Adopter.
One specific note. Again, like PCI the license terms for UEFI
Specification are "reasonable and non-discriminatory". That means in
theory there could be some royalty for IP that's incorporated as part of
the spec in order to implement it. Personally I'm on record as
preferring some form of royalty free terms but part of the compromise to
get the commercial industry backing that UEFI Forum now has was to use
PCI-like licensing terms. A trade-off clearly.
However, two important things to note about that: 1) there is *NO* IP
that reads on the spec of which the member companies are aware so the
issue is essentially moot as a result; and 2) even if there were IP the
members have agreed that it's in no one's interest to make barriers to
adoption any higher than they have to be and a royalty would certainly
be such a barrier so I would not expect to see royalties become an issue
any time soon if ever...doing that would sort of defeat a major purpose
of the spec by making it harder for the industry to move to it.