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I’d be willing to pay but I can’t

I’d be willing to pay but I can’t

Posted Jun 2, 2025 21:54 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: I’d be willing to pay but I can’t by DemiMarie
Parent article: OpenH264 induces headaches for Fedora

The problem is, as soon as you pay the royalty, unless you pay it for EVERYONE you personally cannot distribute any GPL software that you have so licenced. If you have a patent licence, you have to grant all your downstream a patent licence. And in order to do that, you presumably have to buy the patent, not just a licence.

Which is why the distros don't even attempt to play that game. They'd rather play the MAD game - "sue us and we'll use prior art to turn your portfolio into scorched earth".

I think there were a couple of small instances of that on GrokLaw, and the plaintiffs didn't know what hit them.

Cheers,
Wol

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I’d be willing to pay but I can’t

Posted Jun 9, 2025 23:15 UTC (Mon) by DemiMarie (subscriber, #164188) [Link] (1 responses)

Which distros were defendants in those cases?

I’d be willing to pay but I can’t

Posted Jun 10, 2025 6:37 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Don't think it was distros - I just have vague memories of patent threats or something, and the resulting threads were chock-full of prior art.

I think at least one threat actor found themselves fending off loads of claims for re-examination.

Cheers,
Wol


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