Editing PictBridge (section)

== Licensing ==
{{original research|section|date=November 2011}}

The PictBridge specification is not an [[open standard]]; it can only be obtained from CIPA after agreement not to disclose any information from the specification to others.<ref>[http://www.cipa.jp/pictbridge/documents_e/ObtainingStandard_E.pdf section 2.2 of the agreement]</ref> In practice, this means that PictBridge cannot be implemented as [[free and open source software]], other than by reverse-engineering the protocol, if publishing source code of an implementation of the PictBridge standard is considered to count as "disclosing information" from the specification.

A printer may implement functions similar to a PictBridge printer without the non-disclosure agreement merely by treating the camera's memory as a [[USB mass storage device class|USB mass storage device]], although the user interface for image selection would necessarily be on the printer rather than the camera in this case.