Re: x264 for Debian
On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 10:45:12PM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> >
> > The codec has dozens of different corporations holding patents over
> > it, who will try to extract royalties for it in countries where
> > those patents are upheld (ie, USA), and giving it "this is free
> > because it's GPL" hurts truely patent-clear codecs such as
> > VP3.2/Theora from being recognised as such.
>
> VP3/Theora is all but free of patents. On2 has granted unlimited free
> use of the patents they hold relevant to VP3. There are almost
> certainly other patents that could be construed to cover VP3 as well.
> It is a good gesture nonetheless.
I didn't say patent-free, I said patent-clear. On2 has put a license on it
which allows it to be used for any purpose and disclaims any right to restrict
it's use or charge royalties. This is the patent version of the BSD license.
The dozens of corporations holding patents over H.264/MPEG-4 have not made
such a release, and are activly seeking royalties. We don't even know yet
what those royalties will be since those corporations are still fighting
amoung each other over how to divy up the bounty from the combined patent
portfolio. Regardless of the result, it is not patent-clear, will not be
patent-clear, and will suffer worse bashlash as the free MP3 encoders did.
The GPL specifically forbids redistribution when the liberties granted by the
GPL are limited or restricted by patents/etc. To distribute this software on
any US-based server is, thus, in violation of the GPL.
> That said, VP3/Theora can hardly compare with H.264 in terms of coding
> efficiency. There really is no viable alternative in some situations.
> Microsoft's WMV9/VC1 comes close but I'm sure it has every bit as
> non-free licensing terms.
This argument has nothing to do with the freeness of it, or it's compliance to
the DFSG, but instead seems to be arguing that it's patent status should be
ignored because it's superiority over free codecs makes it OK to ignore the
ethical concerns over it.
This is the same argument used to promote the nvidia binary drivers.
Something being useful is not a valid argument to ignore it's proprietary
nature. This is what non-free exists for.
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