Re: [codec] Opus codec licensing

[Koen Vos <[e-mail]>]

If you modify the codec so much that it can't 



From: "Christian Hoene" <[e-mail]> 
To: "Stephan Wenger" <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 11:12:48 AM 
Subject: Re: [codec] Opus codec licensing 

Re: [codec] Opus codec licensing 


Hi 





From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Stephan Wenger 
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 5:21 PM 
To: Jean-Marc Valin; [e-mail]; [e-mail] 
Subject: Re: [codec] Opus codec licensing 



Hi, 
With “hat”: 
It is, in almost all cases, unwise for a third party to circumscribe—or worse: abbreviate—licensing terms provided by a rightholder. Skype’s licensing declaration can be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1297 . I note that the statement contains conditions beyond the acceptance of their technology into an IETF standard. 
Stephan 



[Christian Hoene] +1 



It is planned to test the new codec by spreading it to users prior standardization. However, under the terms of this licensing declaration, this is not possible for anybody but Skype because it would require a license from Skype. 



Also, any enhancement of the codec, which does not conform to the original standard anymore, will require a license. 



Furthermore, any implementation of the codec that accidentally does not confirm to the standard yet will require a license fee. 



Clearly, these terms are unacceptable. Please, Koen, talk to your lawyer again to weaken this license statements. This shall include at least a draft versions of the standard. Also, updates of the standard shall not require any new license anymore. 



It is patent really essential for the opus codec? 

“ A method of estimating noise in data containing voice information and noise includes receiving the data as a sequence of input values; transforming the data by applying a first non linear mapping to the input values wherein the derivative function of the mapping decreases in magnitude as the input values increase in magnitude smoothing the transformed data; and transforming the smoothed transformed data by applying a second non linear mapping that is opposite to the first non linear mapping, to determine an estimate of the noise in the inputted data.” 

Anyhow, it should not be too difficult to circumvent the patent. Any ideas? 



Christian 



--------------------------------------------------------------- 

Dr.-Ing. Christian Hoene 

Interactive Communication Systems (ICS), University of Tübingen 

Sand 13, 72076 Tübingen, Germany, Phone [phone] 

http://www.net.uni-tuebingen.de/ 






On 10.18.2010 19:26 , "Jean-Marc Valin" < [e-mail] > wrote: 

Opus is available under the BSD license. As for patents, Skype has pledged to make them available royalty-free once the codec is accepted as an IETF standard. 

Jean-Marc 

-----Original Message----- 
From: [e-mail] on behalf of Pascal Pochol 
Sent: Mon 10/18/2010 10:19 PM 
To: [e-mail] 
Subject: [codec] Opus codec licensing 

Hello, 

we've been using speex and celt for voice and music but today I heard about 
Opus which sounds like a fantastic replacement for both these codecs. 

We're wondering if Opus will be released under the same type of license as 
speex and celt? SILK's license forbid its use in commercial software and 
we're worried that it might carry over to Opus. If not, as soon as Opus 
handles lower bitrates, stereo and fixed point decoding we'll be using it. 

-Pascal 

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