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0l12/10/20253 repliesview on HN

Uh, the HDMI forum is non-profit


Replies

crote12/10/2025

That's meaningless, because they delegated licensing to HDMI® Licensing Administrator, Inc. And even if they are somehow a nonprofit: you are also not making any profit when all the money you retrieve via licensing fees is used to pay the royalties of the various patent holders.

Nobody cares if the mailing list where they discuss the upcoming specs is managed by a non-profit, the broader HDMI ecosystem is still a massive money grab.

interstice12/10/2025

Then why do they have all this?

zoeysmithe12/10/2025

Profit/non-profit isn't a big difference. Many non-profits are essentially businesses in practice (money spent/managed, the non-profit just a conduit to the for-profit companies that defacto own it), but just don't issue stock. A non-profit can act like this, and DOES. Non-profits exist in a capitalist context and inherit those norms. Again, this is why we aim for open standards.

Also a non-profit is just that, its not a charity. A charity is an entirely other classification and even those are regularly used and abused like this.

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