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An unfortunate descriptionAn unfortunate descriptionPosted Mar 15, 2012 22:09 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)
> Actual binary was exactly the same Well, that hardly qualifies as a "different version of program", then.
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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.)
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