Harald Welte wrote: > Hi all, > > On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:54:05AM +0200, Xavier Bachelot wrote: >>> Yeah, I am still patiently awaiting this. Discussions w/ VIA have >>> gotten me nowhere, as VIA's employees want me to acquire an MPEG LLA >>> license *before* I can get the code from them, at least last time >>> that I tried. > > Which is exactly in conformance with the MPEG-LA patent license agreement as > available from http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-agreement.cfm > > VIA produces an 'intermediate product' and is not responsible for paying the > royalties. It is the entity that 'makes a consumer product' which is 'sold to > an end user'. > > So if you are the final system integrator who turns VIA's chip plus some > software into something that actually performs operations that are covered by > the patents held by the MPEG-LA, you need to sign the license agreement with > MPEG-LA and pay the royalties as per schedule. In this case VIA can be sure > that you pay the licenses and everything is fine. > >>> Perhaps we'll see a shift away from this policy (a la Intel) with the >>> new open-source releasing that is happening now. > > Well, maybe Intel thinks it has sufficient patents itself so that the MPEG-LA > would not sue them, or if they did, Intel has the leverage to countersue. > > But as long as you accept that patents are a business reality, and assume that > at least most or many of the MPEG-LA covered patents are real and enforcible, > then anyone, including VIA will have to bow to the license agreement for those > patents. > > What I personally believe is the best way to solve the problem is to disclose > documentation on the codec acceleration hardware. This documentation is > clearly not a consumer product and not sold to an end user. > > Then the FOSS community or anyone else can write their hardware accelerated > decoder, and decide by themselves if they want to expose themselves to the > legal risk of violating those patents. > >> I would not expect the new VIA driver to get any mpeg acceleration >> capacities in the near future. And they will probably not release any >> documentation on the Unichrome Pro II mpeg engine anytime soon, both >> because of the MPEG LA license. It is still unclear to me (and VIA) who >> should be paying this license fee. > > I think it is pretty clear who should be paying it. But it just doesn't work > with software that is freely distributable/copyable, and for which nobody > knows > how many copies are floating around and running on some systems. > >> I do believe the silicon maker should pay, but VIA rather want to have the >> driver provider pay as it "enables" the feature. > > It is not so much about what any of us believes, but about what the MPEG-LA > licensing conditions say. I would also prefer if all silicon makers would be > responsible for it. But the industry standard practise (not only for mpeg > related patents) is different. If you buy a GSM chipset and license its > firmware from TI (like Openmoko does), then you are still responsible of > licensing all the GSM related patents by yourself from the respective holders. > I did not express myself properly here, I obviously mixed the silicon maker (VIA) with the end-user product (motherboard) maker (which could well be VIA too when considering the EPIA boards). Or do you say the end-user product is the software and not the hardware ? In this case, which software? The driver or the media player ? Or any other layer of the full software stack running on the hardware ? It is clear in the case of a standalone dvd player, but it becomes a bit more complicated when the software is independent from the hardware and even more complicated when there are different layers in the software stack.
>> At any rate, I don't think releasing the hardware documentation would >> infringe any license/patent, but VIA wants to stay on the safest possible >> side. > > I agree with you, and I'm trying my best to make this change inside VIA. > Thanks, your efforts are appreciated :-) Regards, Xavier _______________________________________________ openchrome-users mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.openchrome.org/mailman/listinfo/openchrome-users Main page: http://www.openchrome.org Wiki: http://wiki.openchrome.org User Forum: http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-view_forum.php?forumId=1
