5 ms·

Announcing commercial licensing for x264

49 points by spatulon 16y ago

albertzeyer 16y ago
Just curious: How is a unit defined? For each copy of it? How should that be measured? Or for each download? That can be very inaccurate if you have your product on a lot of independent mirror servers.
- iuytfrdsfgh 16y ago
  If you are distributing a proprietary bit of software you presumably have a method for counting how many copies you sold in order to know how many $ you should have. If you are giving it away then why not just use the GPL version
  - albertzeyer 16y ago
    Yes, I would probably choose GPL. But there might be some people who will not. Maybe even only as Freeware. Or maybe the software itself for free but you pay for some kind of service. In that case you could even use multiple instances of the software at the same time from a single account. Is that all counted as one unit? Because again it is probably impossible to count the copies of the software. That is why I was wondering what "unit" exactly means here.
afhof 16y ago
I'm no expert, but those terms don't sound very enticing.
- callahad 16y ago
  Though the terms do fall short of what most people expect of "dual-licensed" software, I don't think they're that bad. Essentially, instead of offering GPL-only, you now have the option of a license that is similar in terms to the LGPL. Your application code can remain proprietary while using x264.
  - jws 16y ago
    I think the price seems high. It is about 5 times the MPEG-LA fees to license the patents they have implemented. Still, it is only a dollar, so for expensive software it isn't a big deal.
    - wmf 16y ago
      I would guess that MainConcept or Ateme charge much more.
oiuhyjtgfhjkl 16y ago
Does this mean they are finally going to support Visual Studio? Or are they sticking to their - we hate MS, so if you want to use it on windows you have to cross-compile under Linux and then do penance for your immortal soul?
- kierank 16y ago
  There was never any anti-MS sentiment - Visual Studio is not C99 compliant and nobody was going to accept dirty workarounds. If you want to compile x264 on windows you can compile it either with MingW or cygwin with GCC. ICC is also supported on Linux.
- spatulon 16y ago
  That's certainly one way of looking at it. Last time I tried, I had no problem building x264 on Windows with Cygwin. The problem with Visual Studio is that it doesn't support C99, which x264 uses heavily. That suggests to me less of a hatred towards Windows, and more of a general apathy towards Visual Studio.

49 points by spatulon 16y ago

Just curious: How is a unit defined? For each copy of it? How should that be measured? Or for each download? That can be very inaccurate if you have your product on a lot of independent mirror servers.

iuytfrdsfgh 16y ago
If you are distributing a proprietary bit of software you presumably have a method for counting how many copies you sold in order to know how many $ you should have. If you are giving it away then why not just use the GPL version
- albertzeyer 16y ago
  Yes, I would probably choose GPL. But there might be some people who will not. Maybe even only as Freeware. Or maybe the software itself for free but you pay for some kind of service. In that case you could even use multiple instances of the software at the same time from a single account. Is that all counted as one unit? Because again it is probably impossible to count the copies of the software. That is why I was wondering what "unit" exactly means here.

afhof 16y ago

I'm no expert, but those terms don't sound very enticing.

callahad 16y ago
Though the terms do fall short of what most people expect of "dual-licensed" software, I don't think they're that bad. Essentially, instead of offering GPL-only, you now have the option of a license that is similar in terms to the LGPL. Your application code can remain proprietary while using x264.
- jws 16y ago
  I think the price seems high. It is about 5 times the MPEG-LA fees to license the patents they have implemented. Still, it is only a dollar, so for expensive software it isn't a big deal.
  - wmf 16y ago
    I would guess that MainConcept or Ateme charge much more.

oiuhyjtgfhjkl 16y ago

Does this mean they are finally going to support Visual Studio? Or are they sticking to their - we hate MS, so if you want to use it on windows you have to cross-compile under Linux and then do penance for your immortal soul?

kierank 16y ago
There was never any anti-MS sentiment - Visual Studio is not C99 compliant and nobody was going to accept dirty workarounds. If you want to compile x264 on windows you can compile it either with MingW or cygwin with GCC. ICC is also supported on Linux.
spatulon 16y ago
That's certainly one way of looking at it. Last time I tried, I had no problem building x264 on Windows with Cygwin. The problem with Visual Studio is that it doesn't support C99, which x264 uses heavily. That suggests to me less of a hatred towards Windows, and more of a general apathy towards Visual Studio.