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Re: [Ring] Patent-encumbered or proprietary codecs?
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From: |
Thomas Daede |
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Subject: |
Re: [Ring] Patent-encumbered or proprietary codecs? |
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Date: |
Sat, 5 Aug 2017 01:37:10 -0700 |
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User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.2.1 |
On 08/04/2017 08:18 PM, J.B. Nicholson wrote:
> Thomas Daede wrote:
>> (plus, as you may have guessed by now, I'm really not a huge fan of a
>> GNU project endorsing or supporting proprietary codecs)
>
> Are the codecs you identified (H.264, H.263, and MPEG-4 ASP) proprietary
> or patent-encumbered?
They are patent-encumbered. The licenses the patents are available under
make them proprietary (though some people don't take patents into
account for this determination). The implementation is LGPLv2.1+.
> Patent-encumbered software doesn't necessarily restrict all users the
> same way. Patent-encumbered codecs can be implemented as free software
> because not all users are under the same patent regime; a program that
> is patent-encumbered can prevent some users from using the program in
> freedom but not other users.
Users in at least the US, EU, and most of Asia are encumbered, which
likely makes up the majority.