7 ms·

Unfortunately the GPLv2 license makes this an academic exercise. Mind you, perhaps that was exactly the goal, so I'm not criticizing, just pointing out some iss

by jwr 13y ago

Unfortunately the GPLv2 license makes this an academic exercise. Mind you, perhaps that was exactly the goal, so I'm not criticizing, just pointing out some issues. Quoting the GPLv2: 7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. What this basically means in the words of every legal advice I've gotten over the years is that by distributing software that is under GPLv2 you run the risk of having to stop distributing it. While this is fine in an academic setting, if you actually build a product using this software, you are toast. This section of the GPL is actually the major reason why many companies will go to great lengths to avoid using GPLv2 software in their products. Many people think it's the requirement to release the full source code — it's not. Releasing sources is rarely a problem. Please, if you reply to this, don't fight straw men: software authors can choose any license they please and it is their decision to make. I'm not criticizing that choice. I'm just pointing out some consequences which might not be obvious to everyone, and which are particularly relevant in the case of heavily patented video standards.

gilgoomesh 13y ago
The essence of point 7 of the GPL applies to every piece of software covered by patents you don't own or license – other people's patents can force you to do a lot of things against your will. Even if a more permissive BSD or MIT license were used, you could still be prevented from distributing due to patent rulings. In any case, many popular open-source encoders are also under either GPLv2 or LGPLv2.1. Examples include libx264, libmp3lame, libfdk_aac, libfaac. The license hasn't prevented them being very useful to many people.
- jwr 13y ago
  > [...] other people's patents can force you to do a lot of things against your will. Even if a more permissive BSD or MIT license were used, you could still be prevented from distributing due to patent rulings. That is true. But in that case it is not the license that prevents me from distributing and I can negotiate with the patent holders, pay royalties and have the problem resolved. The anti-patent clause in the GPLv2 prevents that: even if I get all the patent licensing in place, I cannot distribute the software if I cannot pass the same rights onto others. That is the whole point of it: as I understand it, it is a tool to fight the freedom battle. > In any case, many popular open-source encoders are also under either GPLv2 or LGPLv2.1. Examples include libx264, libmp3lame, libfdk_aac, libfaac. The license hasn't prevented them being very useful to many people That is also true. I'm just providing a different point of view, one which you might not have heard about: many commercial products cannot include those libraries because of the legal risk. I will not respond to people that shout "FUD" without any arguments. What I wrote was not a rant, and was based on my experience in several companies, each of which got legal advice about this. So, if you believe I'm wrong, please imagine for a moment that I'm building tablets (hence, "distributing" software), I have licensed all the relevant patents (thus, I pay royalties) and describe how you think Section 7 of the GPLv2 permits me to distribute software that requires payment of royalties. EDIT: after reading all the (unnecessarily heated) responses, I think I will have to draw some diagrams. People seem to misunderstand the problem. Again: with many other licenses I can license the patents, and the patent license will cover all my (and my users') usage. With GPLv2 this is not possible, because Section 7 requires that no restrictions be placed on anyone. In other words: yes, it is true that patents are problem for all licenses. No, it is not true that GPLv2 is equivalent to BSD/MIT/other licenses in this regard.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    You could acquire a license that automatically propogates with the GPL code, but it is likely to be expensive... Edited to add: it occurs to me that adding such an ability to RAND requirements might be a very interesting half measure.
  - belorn 13y ago
    If you are under obligations that do not allow recipients to distribute the program, doing so anyway will put you under liability. If you are under contract that says you can not use a patent within a BSD licensed software (that grants redistribution), you will suddenly not be able to distribute software as under BSD license. The contact forbids you, and if you remove the bsd copyright notice then BSD license forbid you. If this happen often to you, my advice is to not get into contractual agreements that contradicts with what you are trying to do. > because Section 7 requires that no restrictions be placed on anyone. False. Section 7 require that recipient of the software can redistribute the software. The lawyer for the European Commission was very explicit in that analysis.
upofadown 13y ago
If the code had instead been licensed as BSD then things would not be different in the slightest for someone who ended up with the code from the original authors. If some legal thing prevents some use permitted by the GPL than that use would of been prevented for the BSD licensed code as well.
- dave1010uk 13y ago
  I believe with a BSD licence you could pay royalties for the license and keep distributing under the BSD license. The GPL clause doesn't allow you to do this.
  - fosap 13y ago
    I'm sure you can do that for GPL software aswell, and i don't see witch part of that clause forbids it.
    - belorn 13y ago
      The argument seems to be as following: You can permit redistribution to recipients of a program even if a patent license forbids you to grant that permission. This is the case of BSD. GPL says that all recipients of a program must be permitted to redistribute. jwr claim that this makes it incompatible with patent licenses.
belorn 13y ago
Please stop spreading FUD. Misleading advices like yours do nothing to help people understand the legal climate of copyright and patents, and thus only spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. The license choice of this program do absolutely nothing to the fact that infringing patent rights run the risk of forcing a company to stop distributing a product. BSD, GPL, MIT, Apache, proprietary license, public domain. It. Does. Not. Matter. Copyright law and patent law are two different area of law. That someone might come and impose condition on the distributor for "other reasons", is quite irrelevant. Of course someone might go to Microsoft and use a rubber hose to impose condition on then, but what the ... does that has to do with copyright licenses? Someone can equally easy impose restriction that prevent a company to comply with the BSD license. Patent agreements are also not even covered by the GPLv2. This has been said by the lawyers who made the license. If you do not trust that, then trust all the lawyers who argued with Stallman to not include such provisions in the GPLv3 draft, which include many of the largest software companies in the world. So again, I call FUD on such claims. If your claim was true, GPLv3 would not be said to had adding it. Last, companies such as blizzard included LGPLv2 software in their flagship product called Starcraft 2. If companies would go for such great lengths to avoid using GPL licenses (the LGPLv2 code itself is under same requirement as GPLv2 except for the linking exception), then how come they couldn't spend the few extra weeks to replace a small library? Or should we all expect that blizzards lawyers are incompetent and this flagship product was just extremely lucky to not been sent to the grave? again, I call FUD. So Please, stop with the FUD. Why ruin more comment threads about interesting software with it? Some people come here to discuss technology.
- tzs 13y ago
  > Patent agreements are also not even covered by the GPLv2 What about section 7?
  - belorn 13y ago
    Section 7 grants the recipient the permission to use, modify and redistribute. If the distributor is under contract which says he can not provide such permission, then the result is quite expectable. BSD license says "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted". If the distributors is under contract that forbids granting such permission, the result is again quite expectable. The only option would be to add restriction on distribution on top of the BSD license, making it proprietary licensed. I will grant jwr that GPL is different from BSD in that aspect, since it do not allow proprietary licensing. Neither has anything to do with patent agreements, because it all focus on permission for redistribution, use and modification. Patent agreements are one company contractually promising not to sue the other company or their customers over patents, and thus we have GPLv3. Since such promise are not conditions placed on either company, section 7 "if ... conditions are imposed on you" do not get invoked. Microsoft-Novell agreement is likely an example of this. See the wikipedia article for more details, including what the lawyers said at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft-Novell_agreement#Agreement_with_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft-Novell_agreement#Agr...
josephlord 13y ago
The GPL only imposes restrictions if you distribute the software. If you only use it internally (e.g. server side) I don't believe that you are under any restrictions.
ultramancool 13y ago
I don't think this is a major concern. x264 is under GPLv2 too and has not run into any such issues despite being in nearly the exact same place patent licensing wise.
- 0x09 13y ago
  x264 offers a commercial licensing program for this reason.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    a) they only offered that later on b) they offer it so that people who don't like the GPL have an option, which is a fairly standard thing for projects that aren't worried about patents to do, not because the GPL is incompatible with x264
    - 0x09 13y ago
      I didn't mean to imply it was the only reason for pursuing a dual-licensing model, but when I spoke to DS about it many years ago (before x264licensing existed) he recognized that it was a potentially serious problem.
      - gillianseed 13y ago
        He certainly recognized that patents is a potential problem, x264 is a implementation of patented technology, however that problem is not tied to the licence no matter what jwr is trying to spin. And patents had nothing to do with them offering a dual-licence model, it was in order to be able to make money from their work when companies wanted to use x264 in a proprietary fashion (GPL is not compatible with proprietary), and from what I understand they have been doing great business this way.
  - gillianseed 13y ago
    No, they released x264 under GPL from the very beginning, the commercial licencing came much later and the reason they offer this is because it is how they (the x264 authors) make money on x264, namely by offering proprietary licences for companies who wants to use x264 in proprietary projects. And there's a new x265 project (not by the same authors) which is using the exact same model, which is that they release it under GPL and will also be selling proprietary licences.
quenlinlom 13y ago
Oh look, it's the resident BSD shills and trolls again.
zobzu 13y ago
"here is black " but - i'm not saying its black! yes, you are criticizing both the license and the choice. personally, i disagree both with the cheap way you argument it while defending yourself (its your opinion, stand by it) and that this license is a bad choice.

by jwr 13y ago

gilgoomesh 13y ago

The essence of point 7 of the GPL applies to every piece of software covered by patents you don't own or license – other people's patents can force you to do a lot of things against your will. Even if a more permissive BSD or MIT license were used, you could still be prevented from distributing due to patent rulings. In any case, many popular open-source encoders are also under either GPLv2 or LGPLv2.1. Examples include libx264, libmp3lame, libfdk_aac, libfaac. The license hasn't prevented them being very useful to many people.

jwr 13y ago
> [...] other people's patents can force you to do a lot of things against your will. Even if a more permissive BSD or MIT license were used, you could still be prevented from distributing due to patent rulings. That is true. But in that case it is not the license that prevents me from distributing and I can negotiate with the patent holders, pay royalties and have the problem resolved. The anti-patent clause in the GPLv2 prevents that: even if I get all the patent licensing in place, I cannot distribute the software if I cannot pass the same rights onto others. That is the whole point of it: as I understand it, it is a tool to fight the freedom battle. > In any case, many popular open-source encoders are also under either GPLv2 or LGPLv2.1. Examples include libx264, libmp3lame, libfdk_aac, libfaac. The license hasn't prevented them being very useful to many people That is also true. I'm just providing a different point of view, one which you might not have heard about: many commercial products cannot include those libraries because of the legal risk. I will not respond to people that shout "FUD" without any arguments. What I wrote was not a rant, and was based on my experience in several companies, each of which got legal advice about this. So, if you believe I'm wrong, please imagine for a moment that I'm building tablets (hence, "distributing" software), I have licensed all the relevant patents (thus, I pay royalties) and describe how you think Section 7 of the GPLv2 permits me to distribute software that requires payment of royalties. EDIT: after reading all the (unnecessarily heated) responses, I think I will have to draw some diagrams. People seem to misunderstand the problem. Again: with many other licenses I can license the patents, and the patent license will cover all my (and my users') usage. With GPLv2 this is not possible, because Section 7 requires that no restrictions be placed on anyone. In other words: yes, it is true that patents are problem for all licenses. No, it is not true that GPLv2 is equivalent to BSD/MIT/other licenses in this regard.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  You could acquire a license that automatically propogates with the GPL code, but it is likely to be expensive... Edited to add: it occurs to me that adding such an ability to RAND requirements might be a very interesting half measure.
- belorn 13y ago
  If you are under obligations that do not allow recipients to distribute the program, doing so anyway will put you under liability. If you are under contract that says you can not use a patent within a BSD licensed software (that grants redistribution), you will suddenly not be able to distribute software as under BSD license. The contact forbids you, and if you remove the bsd copyright notice then BSD license forbid you. If this happen often to you, my advice is to not get into contractual agreements that contradicts with what you are trying to do. > because Section 7 requires that no restrictions be placed on anyone. False. Section 7 require that recipient of the software can redistribute the software. The lawyer for the European Commission was very explicit in that analysis.

upofadown 13y ago

If the code had instead been licensed as BSD then things would not be different in the slightest for someone who ended up with the code from the original authors. If some legal thing prevents some use permitted by the GPL than that use would of been prevented for the BSD licensed code as well.

dave1010uk 13y ago
I believe with a BSD licence you could pay royalties for the license and keep distributing under the BSD license. The GPL clause doesn't allow you to do this.
- fosap 13y ago
  I'm sure you can do that for GPL software aswell, and i don't see witch part of that clause forbids it.
  - belorn 13y ago
    The argument seems to be as following: You can permit redistribution to recipients of a program even if a patent license forbids you to grant that permission. This is the case of BSD. GPL says that all recipients of a program must be permitted to redistribute. jwr claim that this makes it incompatible with patent licenses.

belorn 13y ago

Please stop spreading FUD. Misleading advices like yours do nothing to help people understand the legal climate of copyright and patents, and thus only spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. The license choice of this program do absolutely nothing to the fact that infringing patent rights run the risk of forcing a company to stop distributing a product. BSD, GPL, MIT, Apache, proprietary license, public domain. It. Does. Not. Matter. Copyright law and patent law are two different area of law. That someone might come and impose condition on the distributor for "other reasons", is quite irrelevant. Of course someone might go to Microsoft and use a rubber hose to impose condition on then, but what the ... does that has to do with copyright licenses? Someone can equally easy impose restriction that prevent a company to comply with the BSD license. Patent agreements are also not even covered by the GPLv2. This has been said by the lawyers who made the license. If you do not trust that, then trust all the lawyers who argued with Stallman to not include such provisions in the GPLv3 draft, which include many of the largest software companies in the world. So again, I call FUD on such claims. If your claim was true, GPLv3 would not be said to had adding it. Last, companies such as blizzard included LGPLv2 software in their flagship product called Starcraft 2. If companies would go for such great lengths to avoid using GPL licenses (the LGPLv2 code itself is under same requirement as GPLv2 except for the linking exception), then how come they couldn't spend the few extra weeks to replace a small library? Or should we all expect that blizzards lawyers are incompetent and this flagship product was just extremely lucky to not been sent to the grave? again, I call FUD. So Please, stop with the FUD. Why ruin more comment threads about interesting software with it? Some people come here to discuss technology.

tzs 13y ago
> Patent agreements are also not even covered by the GPLv2 What about section 7?
- belorn 13y ago
  Section 7 grants the recipient the permission to use, modify and redistribute. If the distributor is under contract which says he can not provide such permission, then the result is quite expectable. BSD license says "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted". If the distributors is under contract that forbids granting such permission, the result is again quite expectable. The only option would be to add restriction on distribution on top of the BSD license, making it proprietary licensed. I will grant jwr that GPL is different from BSD in that aspect, since it do not allow proprietary licensing. Neither has anything to do with patent agreements, because it all focus on permission for redistribution, use and modification. Patent agreements are one company contractually promising not to sue the other company or their customers over patents, and thus we have GPLv3. Since such promise are not conditions placed on either company, section 7 "if ... conditions are imposed on you" do not get invoked. Microsoft-Novell agreement is likely an example of this. See the wikipedia article for more details, including what the lawyers said at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft-Novell_agreement#Agreement_with_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft-Novell_agreement#Agr...

josephlord 13y ago

The GPL only imposes restrictions if you distribute the software. If you only use it internally (e.g. server side) I don't believe that you are under any restrictions.

ultramancool 13y ago

I don't think this is a major concern. x264 is under GPLv2 too and has not run into any such issues despite being in nearly the exact same place patent licensing wise.

0x09 13y ago
x264 offers a commercial licensing program for this reason.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  a) they only offered that later on b) they offer it so that people who don't like the GPL have an option, which is a fairly standard thing for projects that aren't worried about patents to do, not because the GPL is incompatible with x264
  - 0x09 13y ago
    I didn't mean to imply it was the only reason for pursuing a dual-licensing model, but when I spoke to DS about it many years ago (before x264licensing existed) he recognized that it was a potentially serious problem.
    - gillianseed 13y ago
      He certainly recognized that patents is a potential problem, x264 is a implementation of patented technology, however that problem is not tied to the licence no matter what jwr is trying to spin. And patents had nothing to do with them offering a dual-licence model, it was in order to be able to make money from their work when companies wanted to use x264 in a proprietary fashion (GPL is not compatible with proprietary), and from what I understand they have been doing great business this way.
- gillianseed 13y ago
  No, they released x264 under GPL from the very beginning, the commercial licencing came much later and the reason they offer this is because it is how they (the x264 authors) make money on x264, namely by offering proprietary licences for companies who wants to use x264 in proprietary projects. And there's a new x265 project (not by the same authors) which is using the exact same model, which is that they release it under GPL and will also be selling proprietary licences.

quenlinlom 13y ago

Oh look, it's the resident BSD shills and trolls again.

zobzu 13y ago

"here is black " but - i'm not saying its black! yes, you are criticizing both the license and the choice. personally, i disagree both with the cheap way you argument it while defending yourself (its your opinion, stand by it) and that this license is a bad choice.