An unfortunate description [LWN.net]

An unfortunate description

Posted Mar 15, 2012 21:09 UTC (Thu) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136)
In reply to: An unfortunate description by khim
Parent article: Idealism vs. pragmatism: Mozilla debates supporting H.264 video playback (ars technica)

> I know how the whole thing worked from personal experience

So does anyone who remembers compiling the OpenSSL-enabled variants of programs (e.g. Lynx) that existed back then.

> BUT THESE VERSIONS WERE ILLEGAL TO USE IN US BECAUSE OF RSA PATENT.

Well, I was actually talking about the former export restriction laws, not the RSA patent. But the same principle applied either way: the legal encumbrance only applied to the library that contains the algorithm in question, not to programs (or other libraries) that call into that library. In other words, if you distribute the program without bundling the legally-encumbered library it uses, you're free from any legal trouble.

That's the situation that Mozilla would be in if they made Gecko depend on GStreamer, and then distributed Gecko in only these three ways: as source code (thus not including GStreamer), as a binary built against OS-provided GStreamer (thus not including GStreamer), and as a binary bundled with a custom build of GStreamer that's had all its codecs and containers stripped out except for the ones Mozilla wants to support (thus not including the patented parts of GStreamer).

> Another, different version of program with PROPERLY LICENSED library was sold in US.

But there wasn't any legal requirement for the US version of the program (not the library) to be "different" from the non-US version. (If they were different from each other, it was because the cryptography libraries were being linked statically, or because the US and non-US cryptography libraries didn't use the same API/ABI as each other, or both of those reasons.)

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An unfortunate description

Posted Mar 15, 2012 22:09 UTC (Thu) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link]

> Actual binary was exactly the same

Well, that hardly qualifies as a "different version of program", then.

An unfortunate description

Posted Mar 15, 2012 22:20 UTC (Thu) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link]

And furthermore: in Mozilla's case, they wouldn't need a different license, because in either case (GStreamer or no GStreamer) they wouldn't be distributing any patent-encumbered codecs.

(I believe that the only possible legal reason for the "different license" on the software you're talking about there could have been was that it bundled the cryptography library as a .so / .dll along with the executable, or something like that.)

An unfortunate description

Posted Mar 16, 2012 5:48 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I believe that the only possible legal reason for the "different license" on the software you're talking about there could have been was that it bundled the cryptography library as a .so / .dll along with the executable, or something like that.

No. The fact that it was sold as PGP-compatible solution was basically enough. If your software is useful without H.264 codecs and can only use them is they are found on the target system then you can probably get away with it. But if you'll start actively encourage people to download H.264 codecs from shady sources to get “the full experience” then you may be accused in evasion of patent (that's why Fedora does not link to unofficial repos with codecs, for example).

An unfortunate description

Posted Mar 16, 2012 12:07 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

But that's mostly a question of wording. "Download h264 codecs from here to make Firefox play those movies" might get you into trouble.

But: "Firefox will play any movie for which your system has the appropriate codecs installed." will definitely not. (it's just a statement of fact, and it doesn't have anything to do with h264 or any other specific codec, it's a general mechanism.)