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by zinekeller
1584 days ago
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> Having the BBC release code for free to commercial use is often deemed to be a "market distortion", and thus not allowed to happen, as such the lawyers will often err on the side of caution. People outside the UK: this isn't just theoretical, please look at the history of BBC Micro. That's how the corporation was structured at the time, and it should be read with this in mind. There are a lot of very fine pieces of BBC software that is stricter than that and can't be legally released to the public, for example most broadcasting software like its MPEG2 encoder aren't available because it'll disadvantage broadcast equipment manufacturers (although for the MPEG2 encoder FFMPEG's is now better). This is also not specific to the BBC: before its disbandment, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (which owned half of the transmission network in the UK, the other half was previously BBC but both were privatized and now owned by Arqiva) required to do product development and research by law but can't commercialise those research by themselves. |
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It's now a running joke, but the disclaimer about The Radio Times really did emerge out of a market distortion legal complaint by a competitor, TV Times.
These market distortion complaints were often timed around BBC Charter renewals to give the BBC's critics in Parliament (generally on the Tory side) ammunition. But at the same time, it's also the era of the Radio One Roadshow, the BBC Micro as you say, the emergence of the VHS box set, etc., etc., and the BBC did need to be required not to distort markets accidentally as it expanded commercially (which ironically it felt encouraged to do in order to find future non-licence-fee revenue)