Re: [rtcweb] Cisco to open source its H.264 implementation and absorb MPEG-LA licensing fees

[Cullen Jennings <[e-mail]>]

On Dec 12, 2013, at 11:51 AM, Roman Shpount <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Cullen,
> 
> I got several question regarding this:
> 
> 1. Have Cisco finalized the license terms for open H.264 binary distribution?

no

> Is this for personal communications only?

doubt I know you mean by "personal communications" and I encourage people who think they understand what MEPG-LA means by non commercial to go talk to your lawyers because it is a specifically defined term that does not mean what you might think using an english dictionary.  I do encourage people to actually read the MPEG-LA FAQ on licensing for AVC as it provides a good way to understand this.  Let me try and answer this much more directly in next question. 

> What are the exact restrictions on what can this be used for, such as can it be used for an MCU which provides a commercial conferencing service?

This is the type of licenses people used in things like Webex (which includes what I think you would call commercial conferencing), Skype, Cisco video conferring system used by business for doing business calls, video conferencing MCU, google hangouts, apple face time, various commercial soft phone and hard phones, the list goes on. 

> 
> 2. Do you absorb just MPEG-LA IPR license fees or do you absorb all the IPR license fees needed to run the binary? For instance, do you have agreement with Nokia in place? Have you encoder been reviewed regarding the IPR not covered by MPEG-LA license which covers decoder only?

The Cisco messaging has been very clear about this. Obviously no one can know about patents they don't know about and Cisco is not distributing a binary module that  they don't legally have the right to distribute. 

Think about someone else, who if the first person who gets sued if some new IRP comes up on H.264. It won't people Mozilla who are distributing Firefox with no H.264 code in it, it is more likely to be Cisco who is distributing the binary download that contains the H.264 code.  Google taking a similar approach with a VP8 binary module might help alleviate some of the concerns about IPR on VP8. 


> 
> 3. Is there are going to be an open process in place for third parties to provide IPR declarations?

> For instance somebody detects that Cisco codec infringes on their IPR and decides to sue the users vs Cisco. Having an open process to disclose IPR might serve as a protection tactic, since if the such third party is suing people without making their IPR claim publicly available, they can be more easily defended against.

Sure - just send it to the email list. 

> 
> 4. Who would be allowed to host the binary modules on Cisco site? How friendly do you have to be with Cisco to get a module version which is specific to you to be hosted on the Cisco site?

I'd probably rephrase that question a bit since Cisco is taking the open source and compiling it and putting up the binary module but I think I know what you are getting at. Lets say polycom, one of Cisco's largest competitor in video conferencing, wanted to to add an option to the code to support the foo feature in the codec because they like to use that and sent  a patch under BSD license. I would imagine the governance board for the open source project would accept that and Cisco would start building it into the binary modules. 

Let me give an example the other way. Someone ports it to a vax780 and wants Cisco to dispute that. Until it was clear that the number of downloads for that was going to get close to 100 thousand, I doubt people would be keen on making a binary for it because the person can easily host it themselves. 

Lets say there is some API you need to make it so you can do they type of control you want in a VP8 to H.264 transcoder and you submit a patch for that and it looks like it would in over 100k volumes. As long as it does not break other things, it's really hard imaging it would not be accepted. 

> 
> 5. What would be the IPR terms for any changes contributed to Cisco codec? Would you require a contributor to provide all users of this site a free license? 

not sure what you mean by free license but ..

They patches would need to be BSD licenses, but no, we can't ask for a licenses to all patents that apply to the patch. Lets say you decided to implement high profile for the codec (we hope someone does that but it's not in the code yet) and contribute the code under BSD. There is no way you can provide royalty free license to all the patents on that because you don't own all the patents. However, we would still very much like to take the code because we can include that in the binary module and make it a better codec. 


> 
> Regards,
> 
> _____________
> Roman Shpount