On Tue, 2003-08-12 at 15:37, Mark Spencer wrote:I have no idea why VoiceAge want to protect the code as they do. The code isn't interesting to licence. Its the pool of patents you really need to licence, and that is bundled with the VoiceAge codec. I don't know if they indemnify their licencees with regard to other patent holders crawling out of the woodwork with fresh claims on G.729, but they do include a licence for the known patents. Believe VoiceAge have some kind of exclusive pool licencing rights. I'm not clear how this works, though.
Couldn't agree more. The G.729 codec is so unDigium-like... don't buyI don't think anybody buys G.729 just to have it. They buy it because
it is my recommendation.
they *have* to have it. And we sell it because they *have* to have it. I
think eventually we'll be able to come up with a better (but not, for the
near future, open) G.729 solution from us.
What is the "license" for? The actual binary module or for the patented codec? If it's for the codec, then why can't you get a license from voiceage and then use your own code. As you said it's available from the ITU.
The ITU G.729 code is pretty much useless for real world use. It is very slow. It gets the right answers, but not by efficient means. All the voice codec reference code I have seen is like this. The people who develop these things *have* to write an efficient version, as standards bodies demand to know the approximate MIPS a good implementation will require. The implementors do not release this version as the reference model. I've been through this from the codec developer's side. The reference model may be 10 or more times slower than a commercial grade implementation. I've no idea what the ratio might be for G.729.
If someone produced a good open implementation of G.729, then it might be interesting to see how much the patents could be licenced for. The usual problem with these pooling things is they offer you two deals: One is US$many per port for one port up. The other is US$little per port for larger volumes, but you need to pay a one off fee of US$100,000 (or something on that scale) up front.
Regards, Steve
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