On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Håkon Wium Lie<howc...@opera.com> wrote: > Also sprach Daniel Berlin: > > > >>> "For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free > > >>> redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly > > >>> or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it > > >>> and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the > > >>> Library." > > > Note that the actual *clause* (not the example) in question says > > "If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your > > obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, > > then as a consequence you may not distribute the Library at all. " > > It then gives the patent example as an example of when you could not > > fulfill your obligations under the license. The restrictive license > > in the example falls afoul of this condition (part of #10): "You may > > not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the > > rights granted herein." Nothing in any licenses we have with other > > parties imposes any *further restrictions* on the recipients who get > > ffmpeg from us. You get *exactly* the same set of rights and > > obligations we got from ffmpeg. > > As such, we can simultaneously satisfy our obligations under this > > license (which again does not require us to pass along patent rights > > we may have obtained elsewhere, it only requires we grant you the > > rights you find in terms 0-16 and place no further restrictions on > > you) and any patent licenses we may have, and do not run afoul of this > > clause. > > I get parsing errors in my brain when reading this. While I understand > that you do not impose any new restrictions (as per #10), I still > don't understand how you can claim that #11 (the first two quotes > above) has no relevance in your case. To me, it seems that the example > in #11 (the first quote) matches this case exactly -- assuming that > Google has a patent license that does not permit royalty-free > redistribution. As i've said in other messages, this example doesn't match this case at all, since the patent license was not given to us by the same people who gave us the library, *and* our patent license doesn't even say anything about the library used to do encoding/decoding. I.E. Our patent license has 0 to say about our distribution of ffmpeg, only something to say about our distribution of Chrome, which is only covered by section 6 of the LGPL 2.1 (which allows distribution under whatever terms we choose so long as we meet certain requirements, which we do).
> I also understand that the LGPL doesn't explicitly "require [anyone] > to pass along patent rights we may have obtained elsewhere". However, > it seems quite clear that the intention of #11 is to say that you > cannot redistribute the code unless you do exactly that. > What am I missing? > That our patent license does not restrict/grant/say anything about ffmpeg, only Google Chrome, and Google Chrome itself doesn't fall under the LGPL 2.1 except through section 6. --Dan