Re: [Trisquel-users] Cisco offering a FLOSS H.264 codec

[jason]

"You said the binary is non free but one of the Cisco PR members said if you  
take the BSD licensed source and compile it, that it will match the binary  
you download."

And when you download the source and compile you don't get the patent  
license. You want the patent license, go download the binary. You get the  
source code and compile that? No patent license, even though it matches the  
binary. Strange, huh? So, if you want the patent license you *have* to use  
the binary version and forego the source code, even if the source code  
compiles into the same binary. I can't say I've seen such a deal proposed  
before but I can say that access to source code is a precondition for a  
program to be free, which you must forego in order to get the binary with the  
patent license, so it's not free because you're not getting source code  
without giving up the patent license you want... which makes  
binary-with-forfeited-source-code non-free. Go figure.