On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 7:09 PM, dink chik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thank you very much for the reply, Rob. That was my understanding of it as > well until I came across this article from Wikipedia under the section Patents > and GNU Free Software licenses > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patents_and_GNU_Free_Software_licenses> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patents_and_GNU_Free_Software_licenses > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patents_and_GNU_Free_Software_licenses> > "Conversely, shipping (not necessarily implementing) a product in the U.S. > which includes an LGPL H.264 decoder/encoder would be in violation of the > software license of the codec implementation. In simple terms, the LGPL and > GPL licenses require that any rights held in conjunction with distributing > the code also apply to anyone receiving the code, and no further > restrictions are put on distribution or use. If there is a requirement for a > patent license to be sought, this is a clear violation of both the GPL and > LGPL terms. ....." >
As for now I think just to provide the binary object files so that it's possible to link different h264 lgpl object files against your commercial application should do. Any change you're going to apply to the h264 has to be opened upon request, which is also very unlikely I think. Code can easily be received if someone sends you an email and you point them to the h264 sources, this could also be done in the About or Credits section of your application. If you have a console application you should print it upon startup I think. No linux distribution ships the sources of all packages with their products either, they can be obtained online. Nvidia/AMD/Vmware let the user violate against the GPL by letting him compile binary files against GPL'ed opensource. GPL is like swiss cheese, many holes where someone can slip through if he knows how, people just recently tried to clean up some parts last year with AGPL, but that would be the dead of several commercial companies which pay their people for contributing to some parts of opensource. Markus > Any comments on this? > > Thanks in advance. > > Regards, > Dink > > On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Robert Swain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > >> 2008/11/12 dink chik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> > Can I use FFMPEG Library (LGPL) for a commercial program. I have a need >> to >> > use the H.264 decoder. Can I then distribute FFMPEG's dlls without >> violating >> > the patent license for H264 even if we pay the H264 patent fee? >> >> We are not lawyers but... >> >> - If you comply with the licenses appropriate for whatever bits of >> FFmpeg software you use, you will have no problems from us. >> - If you pay for license fees for the codecs you use, you should not >> have any problems from them. >> >> Please read the LGPL and you should be able to see that you can use it >> for a commercial program. You can even use GPL for commercial >> programs, you just have to comply with its terms. >> >> Regards, >> Rob >> _______________________________________________ >> libav-user mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/libav-user >> > _______________________________________________ > libav-user mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/libav-user > _______________________________________________ libav-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/libav-user
