4 ms·
I think they are concerned that there may still be some unexplored patents which apply to Opus. If they don't track the numbers, then they may need to pay the a
by microcolonel 10y ago
I think they are concerned that there may still be some unexplored patents which apply to Opus. If they don't track the numbers, then they may need to pay the absolute maximum license fee to a (future, unknown) patent holder because they can't bound the number of licensees.
That is, of course, assuming there are still IP issues. I'm not sure what made them concerned about that, if anything tangible.
Notably, the Opus license is voided when you enter Opus-related patent litigation with an Opus user. I think many(most?) companies which hold patents relevant to Opus also license Opus for their products; so they would be trading patent litigation for copyright litigation.
From the Opus licensing page¹:
When it comes to patents, it is difficult to say much without making lawyers nervous. However, we can say something quite direct: external counsel Dergosits & Noah has advised us that Opus can be implemented without the need to license the patents disclosed by Qualcomm, Huawei, France Telecom, or Ericsson. We can also say that Mozilla is confident enough in Opus to ship it to hundreds of millions of Firefox users. Similarly, Cisco and Google are also supporting Opus in some products. More companies are expected to do the same soon.
Mozilla invested significant legal resources into avoiding known patent thickets when designing Opus. Whenever possible, we used processes and methods that have been long known in the field and which are considered patent-free. In addition, we filed numerous patent applications on the new things we invented to help defend the Opus community. As a result, Opus is available on a royalty-free basis and can be deployed by anyone, including other open-source projects. Everyone knows this is an incredibly challenging legal environment to operate in, but we think we’ve succeeded.
1. http://www.opus-codec.org/license/ http://www.opus-codec.org/license/
- mynameislegion 10y agoI wonder if they got shook down by a patent troll?
- mynameislegion 10y agoIf so, Oracle did too: > Transcoding the Opus codec requires a special license as it is subject to a royalty agreement. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E61547_01/doc/esbc_ecz730_maintenancerelease.pdf https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E61547_01/doc/esbc_ecz730_mainten...
- microcolonel 10y agoI think they are referring to the non-litigation clause in the Opus license. Oracle probably charges extra for taking on the burden of potentially not litigating because of that license.
- derf_ 10y agoWe asked some folks at Oracle about this, and my understanding is that this fee is imposed by the vendor providing the Opus implementation for their DSPs. Oracle is just passing on this cost. A specific implementation may, of course, include technology which has additional licensing or fee structures on top of the basic royalty-free license used with the reference implementation.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- indolering 10y agoI doubt it, Digium is scared of patents but the SFLC seriously considered going to court to get the known patent declarations declared invalid. If someone had gone after Digium, I'm sure the SFLC would love to hear about it.