[x264-devel] Re: x264 licensing

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller]

Hi David,
We don't have any patented custom code, the code in question would be
the x264 code itself. Most of our customers are currently US based and
there are patents on the h264 codec being enforced by the courts in the
US. So we would need to take out a license with MPEGLA for H264 to
distribute anything based on x264. 

Switching to the LGPL would make things better for the GStreamer project
as we do strongly prefer LGPL or similarly licensed libraries to go with
that, but for Fluendo it wouldn't solve anything. Clause 11 of the LGPL
makes it impossible for us to distribute x264 as part of a commercial
offering as we can not possible offer to pay the patent license for
everyone receiving copies of the code.

If you are considering a re-license to a more permissive license then
the MPL 1.1 license would be LGPL like yet handle patents in a way that
lets us use and contribute to x264. The MPL refers to a LEGAL file which
can include information about 3rd party IP claims.

This is why we used the MPL for the MPEG2 Program and Transport Stream
demuxer we released recently:
https://core.fluendo.com/gstreamer/svn/trunk/gst-fluendo-mpegdemux/

Christian

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 10:44 -0800, David Pio wrote:
> wouldn't this issue be solved by the previous conversation abuot
> converting x264 to LGPL?
> Then your custom patented code can stay close source, while you link
> to the open source 264 library...
> 
> On 2/7/06, Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <christian at fluendo.com>
> wrote:
>         Hi x264 developers,
>         I don't know if any of you know Fluendo, but we are a company
>         doing
>         multimedia solutions for Linux, mostly using the GStreamer
>         framework.
>         
>         We are currently looking into h264 encoding and we have a
>         couple of 
>         possibilities available, like write our own encoder, license
>         it from
>         another company or try to use an open source project like
>         x264.
>         
>         We have no issue with contributing back and fixes and changes
>         we do, but
>         since we would need to take out patent licenses in order to be
>         able to
>         sell our services a lot of places we can't use x264 under the
>         GPL.
>         
>         So I am writing this mail to see if there is a possibility to
>         be allowed
>         to take a snapshot copy of x264 and resell that under a
>         proprietary
>         license. This doesn't necessary need to be the most recent
>         copy,
>         depending on developer willingness.
>         
>         We are prepared to pay money for this right or sign a contract
>         stating 
>         that any changes we do will be contributed back or a
>         combination of
>         these or other agreed upon terms.
>         
>         Anyway, let me know if this is a possibility you are
>         interested in
>         discussing. I tried sending a mail about this a little over a
>         week ago 
>         to Laurent, since his mail address was the first on the page,
>         but I
>         didn't get a reply.
>         
>         Sincerely,
>         Christian Schaller
>         
>         
>         --
>         Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller
>         Business Development Manager
>         Fluendo S.L.
>         Mobile Phone: +34 678093464
>         Office Phone: +34 933175153
>         Fax         : +34 934127034
>         
>         
>         --
>         This is the x264-devel mailing-list
>         To unsubscribe, go to:
>         http://developers.videolan.org/lists.html
>         
> 
-- 
Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller
Business Development Manager
Fluendo S.L.
Mobile Phone: +34 678093464
Office Phone: +34 933175153
Fax         : +34 934127034

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