Comments on: Fluendo releases proprietary codecs

By: thilo pfennig

thilo pfennig — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well the thing is where we want to go? Sure nobody needs to use free codecs – and nobody needs to use free software. We can all use Windows if we want – but maybe we want to have different conditions. Wouldn’t we rather like to have free content, free software and (patent)free codecs? Then what does that mean to our business? I would agree though that selling this is not more evil than just providing the reverse engineered codecs. What I am generally missing is more solidarity between different communities (free culture, free software and anti patent lobbies). Free culture for instance also propagates the use of proprietary OSes like the Mac – there is always a good reason for making an exception – but if we would work more with free alternatives this would make a whole lot more sense. This is not dogmatic – I think mixing the proprietary with the free world always makes things complicated and OTOH combined powers could move mountains. Instead every community thinks mostly about its own standing and does crossover with the proprietary world where it does not habe its focus. So newest Drupal has tutorial videos in MPEG4 and not Ogg Theora, although Drupal itself is GPL software.

By: Joe Buck

Joe Buck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Most use of proprietary codecs does not violate the GPL in any way. The codec itself is not a derivative work of any GPL work, so it is not covered; downloading it from the network to one’s own machine cannot violate the GPL. Causing that codec to be linked into a GPL’ed application on a user’s own system, using a generic interface, again is not a GPL violation, as the GPL only covers distribution, not use. In fact, I can link arbitrary proprietary code with GPL code on my own system without violating the GPL as long as no distribution is involved (and no, this does not mean that distributors can use “user does the link” as a hole; if Alice provides a mechanism that results in Bob winding up with an identical program in her computer’s memory as the one in Alice’s computer memory, distribution has taken place, regardless of any technical tricks).

There is a case where there is a GPL violation: if a distributor puts together a system consisting of proprietary codecs and GPL software and distributes that, the distributor is violating the GPL, because s/he is distributing a system that links proprietary and GPL code in one program. So some distributors, the Linspire types, might consider deals with Fluendo, and others might direct their customers to Fluendo.

Now, if Fluendo manages to raise money by this program that helps support their work on free software, I have no problem. But they should avoid creating false impressions and implying that people who aren’t their customers are law-breakers. Depending on the particular codec and its terms of use, some other software license might be violated, but the GPL is not violated by the most common uses of proprietary codecs.

By: thebluesgnr

thebluesgnr — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What proprietary codecs do you mean?

I find that I can play pretty much everything with gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg. Of course these may not be legal in some countries, fortunately they’re still legal where I live.

If you mean the w32codecs, I believe copyright law makes them illegal in most countries.

By: Dave Neary

Dave Neary — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I mean the Win32 codecs, of course.

Dave.

By: jg

jg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“I mean the Win32 codecs, of course.”

They are utterly useless. WMV9 is now working with VLC, with an open source implementation. (not the proprietary code.)

By: Zaheer Merali

Zaheer Merali — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Joe Buck: I think you misrepresent Fluendo completely. Fluendo are not implying that people that are not their customers are law breakers. There are open source implementations of all the codecs that Fluendo are selling, but none are possible for companies to distribute across their desktops or for Linux distributors to distribute with or without buying patent licences.

Fluendo’s codec implementations however are, and that’s what should make them attractive to companies with large Linux desktop rollouts or to Linux distributors.