Re: [rtcweb] Proposal for H.263 baseline codec

["Kevin P. Fleming" <[e-mail]>]

On 03/29/2012 09:53 AM, Stephan Wenger wrote:

> The other issue, though (the fact that the license grant extends only to
> the VP8 implementation as provided by google, and does not extent to
> derivative works such as hardware implementations) should be moderately
> alarming even for an open source person.  With respect to this clause, I
<snip>

This is concerning, even for us open source software distributors. In 
fact, a similar situation existed some time ago with iLBC; the license 
that GIPS offered covered only the code as distributed as part of the 
RFC (although the language stating this was quite poorly constructed), 
and that code had (and still has) fundamental issues (it has at least 
two places where it invokes 'undefined behavior' according to the C 
standard). When we fixed these problems in our distribution, and then I 
re-read the license, I realized that the license did not allow us to 
distribute this modified version. We later managed to get explicit 
permission from Google to distribute a modified version, as they have 
changed the license to no longer have this restriction.

The WebM patent license has much of the same problem, though: it only 
applies to distributions of the code made by Google, without changes (no 
derivative works). At least, this is my reading of it, being an engineer 
married to a lawyer who handles such things, but not a lawyer myself :-)

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
Jabber: [e-mail] | SIP: [e-mail] | Skype: kpfleming
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