Re: [rtcweb] where that h264 plugin can be used

[Randell Jesup <[e-mail]>]

On 11/13/2013 12:43 PM, Martin Thomson wrote:
> On 13 November 2013 02:34, Tim Panton <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 3) Cloud platforms:
> At least for the Microsoft cloud, I don't see this being an issue.
> It's pretty standard to have a setup step once an image is deployed.

I'm not an expert on AWS/etc, but I imagine predictable and fast startup 
of instances is important.  With a plugin download (even from Cisco), it 
would seem to be worrisome for a cloud service developer to rely on this 
completing "quickly" and not having an error *ever* - and they can't 
host it themselves.  I think Cisco would have to say that (at least) 
certain versions of the binary (warts, bugs and all) MUST remain 
available for immediate download <long time>.  And anything (lawsuit) 
that for any reason forced Cisco to even temporarily stop distributing 
it would be disaster for them; so I think they'd need to bite the bullet 
and sign a license - which has costs even if you stay under 100K (and 
you have to reliably count uses, etc).

Also, if they're encoding videos in H.264 and charging money to see them 
(or for a service that includes them, and this might include even an 
answering-system I'm-away video message), they wouldn't fall into the 
Cisco-paid cap category (perhaps; IANAPL).

-- 
Randell Jesup -- rjesup a t mozilla d o t com