ISO acts to stop JPEG royalty grab

The news of Forgent Networks` plans to start claiming royalties for the JPEG format has brought the International Standards Organisation (ISO) out of hiding and, according to a report in TheRegister, the body is considering withdrawing the standard if Forgent doesn`t back off. According to the ISO`s JPEG committee, the move by Forgent, after almost two decades of royalty-free use, will oblige the organisation to withdraw the standard. According to the ISO terms, only standards that are free or those that can be implemented on "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms are acceptable. Forgent Networks, a Texas-based company that acquired the JPEG standard through its purchase of Compression Labs, recently announced that Sony was already paying it $15 million for the right to use the format and it expected others to follow suit. [More at TheRegister]

Open source made it into the hallowed halls of UK power yesterday when the topic was discussed by Parliament. According to TheRegister, Home Affairs minister Douglas Alexander announced a new policy saying the government would be looking to "award contracts on a value for money basis and seeking to avoid lock-in to proprietary IT products and services". Ironically, the Office of Government Commerce distributed the announcement in a Microsoft Word format from a cryptic .asp link on its site. According to Alexander, open source "is indeed the start of a fundamental change in the software market". TheRegister in typical style labels the policy as "cautiously pro" open source. [More at TheRegister]

Joining the masses switching to open source is graphics company NVIDIA. It will release its Cg compiler technology under a "non-restrictive, free licence", the company said yesterday. The compiler, which will be available in August for download, will include the parser and a generic backend. Widely regarded as the "C" for graphics, Cg can be used on multiple platforms for the creation of special effects and real-time cinematic material. The Cg language provides a level of abstraction which removes the need for programmers to program directly to the graphics hardware.

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