On 9/11/06, Antoine Pitrou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Le samedi 09 septembre 2006 à 16:57 +0200, Jérôme WAGNER a écrit :
> Ps: by the way, I saw that ffmpeg has different compile time options
> depending on the licence you are targeting. Was is not sufficient for Extras
> to limit it to the LGPL portion ?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the possible legal issue with ffmpeg
is not a copyright problem, it is a patent problem.
true
ffmpeg is threatened by patents because nearly every efficient video
compression algorithm out there is patented: MPEG2 is patented, H264 is
patented... (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patent_licensing)
(*)
true
Realistically, any library implementing these codecs (or important parts
of them) will have the same issues as ffmpeg. Linux distributions have
different policies with respect to patent issues.
true
As far as I know
Fedora is one of the most cautious, not even including MP3 support in
the official repositories. A plugin system allows them to ship
multimedia tools without the codecs that they find unacceptable - and
then third-parties repositories can provide the missing functionality
via special packages (wengophone-h264, etc.).
That's why I am pushing toward this approach as much as I can
((*) fortunately, software patents aren't supposed to be enforceable in
the European Union... even if many European companies probably pay for
MPEG anyway)
I hope the EU will stay this way, and USA will rethink their system...
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