A: Open Media Commons (OMC) is an Open Source community initiative that Sun Microsystems announced in August 2005 to develop royalty-free technologies and open solutions for digital content creation, duplication, distribution, and consumption. Information about OMC can be found at http://www.openmediacommons.org.

A: Open Media Commons seeks to drive cross-industry growth and prosperity as well as promote both intellectual property protection and user privacy.

OMC's goals include:

• Develop open, royalty-free digital media solutions
• Promote the creation, duplication, distribution and consumption of digital content
• Collaborate with like-minded Open Source communitiea
• Influence standards organizations to adopt royalty-free interoperability

OMC's principles include:

• Innovation flourishes through openness - open standards, open reference architectures and Open Source implementations
• Creators are users and users are creators
• Respect for users' privacy is essential
• Code (both laws and technology) should encourage innovation.

A: The existence of multiple proprietary and royalty-bearing digital media solutions stifles innovation, encumbers the consumer and increases the cost and effort involved in distributing content. With more and more people and devices participating on the network, this is the ideal time for the community to develop and implement an open, royalty-free safe and business-friendly end-to-end digital media solution that compensates content owners, enables innovation and embraces diversity (of content, devices and business models).

A: In March 2006, Sun released two draft specifications for content protection technologies -- DReaM-CAS (Conditional Access System) and DReaM-MMI (Mother May I) - as well as the open source code for a prototype implementation of the DReaM-CAS conditional access system. In March 2006, Sun hosted a two-day workshop in Santa Clara, Calif. focused on the technical, legal and intellectual property-related aspects of the Open Media Commons. Approximately 90 people from 30+ companies participated in the workshop, representing a broad cross-section of industries. More information on the workshop, including presentations, is available here.

In April, 2008, Sun announced the intention to develop and release OMS, a complete open media solution including codecs, transport, and content security and to release OMS Video, a royalty-free video codec.

A: The Open Media Commons is open to anyone who is interested in developing an open, royalty-free digital media solution. Anyone who wishes to get involved can review the specs/code and make contributions either through the open source project on java.net or through the community forums on the OMC website.

A. With its successful history of building open communities, and with its proven commitment to open source, Sun is the ideal company to lead this cross-industry effort. In 2001, Sun started the Liberty Alliance with the goal of developing open standards-based specifications for federated identity and identity-based Web services. There were plenty of people who said it couldn't be done, yet today the Liberty Alliance has been a success for both businesses and consumers. Further, Sun has always been an advocate and contributor to the open source community.

Sun now brings its expertise in building open communities, as well as its experience participating in many industry organizations, to the Open Media Commons initiative.

A: In designing DReaM, Sun followed the best proven security models that are used today: PKI, SSL, HTTP and AES. We believe that much of the key technology necessary for CAS can be pulled from expired IP developed in the 1970s. Sun has been conducting detailed patent and claims analysis for more than a year, and is in the process of filing for new patents that cover key concepts in development. We believe that a "Patent Commons" will be necessary in order to create a "safe, non-assert patent pool" around DReaM.

A: In royalty-free, process equals result. Open Media Commons' IPR process is based on sound, conservative patent law principles accepted by the legal practitioners and the courts. Open Media Commons' IPR process has a proven track record & is even more thorough than other open initiatives that have also successfully produced royalty-free results.

A: Sun chose the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved CDDL license because it allows greater freedom to the community using the code, fostering more innovation and community involvement. The CDDL provides developers and other licensees with the comfort of an express patent license in addition to a copyright license. Under the CDDL, developers have the freedom to distribute binaries under a different license. Those who add code to the open source project are required to share their modifications with the community so everyone can benefit as code is enhanced and the project evolves. Unlike under the GPL, there is no risk of a viral effect. You can combine code licensed under the CDDL with code licensed under other licensing models (provided the other licenses do not prevent this).

A: Open source code is not free of restrictions. Those restrictions typically include: technology offered "as is" with a disclaimer of all express and implied warranties (including merchantability, fitness for purpose, and non-infringement), and requirements to include copyright notices and other license terms with any distribution. Depending on the open source license type, there may be additional restrictions and requirements.

A: Open source code is not free of restrictions. Those restrictions typically include: technology offered "as is" with a disclaimer of all express and implied warranties (including merchantability, fitness for purpose, and non-infringement), and requirements to include copyright notices and other license terms with any distribution. Depending on the open source license type, there may be additional restrictions and requirements.