Re: [rtcweb] A different perspective on the video codec MTI discussion

[Basil Mohamed Gohar <[e-mail]>]

On 03/14/2013 02:11 PM, Roman Shpount wrote:
> One thing that was not clear for me from your blog was if an
> application running on Windows OS and using OS provided API for H.264
> playback is licensed to do so.
Roman,

I again have to put out there *very clearly* that I am not a lawyer.  I
can only take some clear statements I've been given and/or read and
present them together.  But the license that Microsoft provides their
users as stated in the manual is a private, non-commercial license.  So,
if the usage fits those definitions, it seems to be the case.  The
attorney from MPEG-LA made clear that their licensing is for end-user
products.  That's why someone can write an H.264 decoder or encoder, and
ship it without much problem, but it's the *users* of said
decoder/encoder that would face the licensing question.

Does that make sense?  This is what I mean by the licensing being
somewhat odd.  It's totally not a problem (maybe not *totally*, but I
hope you get the idea) for software producers.  It's *totally* a problem
for the users.

It's a shame that people like me, who do not have any real legal
background, and the ones having to explain this, and people that
actually know better are either not speaking about it or are not being
heard.  The problems posed by H.264 licensing for users, and thus the
free software community, are very severe and confusing.

-- 
Libre Video
http://librevideo.org