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Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

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Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#52
post #48

What Mozilla should do is patent the hell of out everything they are currently developing. One way out is a MAD style codec arms race. You have to get the other side to capitulate, to tap out. If you have no patents you have no leverage. The problem with the licensing "authorities" is that they are borg like in that hundreds of orgs have put patents in the pool. Nocking out a patent or two won't effect them.

They are patenting what they develop.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's important to note that this isn't a project to create a new codec. Are you sure? The alliance website says "The Open and royalty-free format for next-generation ultra high definition media" and their top news item is "Alliance for Open Media Established to Deliver Next-Generation Open Media Formats".

Oh, good point. I jumped right to the Joint Development Foundation part. Oops!

To be fair, it seems you were technically correct (the best kind!) and the website messaging is slightly confusing. According to xiphmont the main point of this particular group is for sharing IP investigation, and the development output of the members will be directed towards NetVC effort in the IETF. So a codec will be produced, and by these same people, but wearing different hats.

http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/67752.html

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#54
post #48

What Mozilla should do is patent the hell of out everything they are currently developing. One way out is a MAD style codec arms race. You have to get the other side to capitulate, to tap out. If you have no patents you have no leverage. The problem with the licensing "authorities" is that they are borg like in that hundreds of orgs have put patents in the pool. Nocking out a patent or two won't effect them.

Non-practicing entities cannot infringe on patents

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#55

Would be interesting to see if this can be pulled off mostly due to existing patents. H.265 license covers over 500 patents you can find quite a few of them dating form the 90's which will expire in 2-3 years, but also quite a few that wont. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/hevc/Documents/hevc-att1... Considering that many companies patent everything and their mother I wonder if it's possible to actually have a Ro…

That's the great thing about Daala, they are exploring alternate ways to build a video codec.I'm really hopeful that one day it will be as successful as Opus. There was a great talk about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmho4gcRvQ4

Opus is tricky, it's royalty free but it's not a "free (as in free software)" standard, it's based on Patents held by the likes of Broadcom and MSFT which make them available without royalties.

This is what I've mentioned earlier there are quite a few royalty free but they are still based on held patents which are offered without royalties.

That said honestly I'm not sure how big royalties are HDMI has quite steep royalties DisplayPort doesn't and with pretty much all devices that come with a single/mono-cultured display interface will use HDMI rather than DisplayPort.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the great thing about Daala, they are exploring alternate ways to build a video codec.I'm really hopeful that one day it will be as successful as Opus. There was a great talk about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmho4gcRvQ4

Opus is tricky, it's royalty free but it's not a "free (as in free software)" standard, it's based on Patents held by the likes of Broadcom and MSFT which make them available without royalties. This is what I've mentioned earlier there are quite a few royalty free but they are still based on held patents which are offered without royalties. That said honestly I'm not sure how big royalties are HDMI has quite steep ro…

Do royalty free patents stop something from being free software? That would be surprising.

Opus' patents have patent retaliation clauses. It would be funny if those were incompatible with the GPL, because the GPL is essentially a "copyright retaliation" license.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#58
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opus is tricky, it's royalty free but it's not a "free (as in free software)" standard, it's based on Patents held by the likes of Broadcom and MSFT which make them available without royalties. This is what I've mentioned earlier there are quite a few royalty free but they are still based on held patents which are offered without royalties. That said honestly I'm not sure how big royalties are HDMI has quite steep ro…

Do royalty free patents stop something from being free software? That would be surprising. Opus' patents have patent retaliation clauses. It would be funny if those were incompatible with the GPL, because the GPL is essentially a "copyright retaliation" license.

We ran the Opus license terms by the FSF before publishing them, and they confirmed that the terms were compatible with the GPL (v3 or otherwise).

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#59
post #52
post #48

What Mozilla should do is patent the hell of out everything they are currently developing. One way out is a MAD style codec arms race. You have to get the other side to capitulate, to tap out. If you have no patents you have no leverage. The problem with the licensing "authorities" is that they are borg like in that hundreds of orgs have put patents in the pool. Nocking out a patent or two won't effect them.

They are patenting what they develop.

Can you provide a link? Because this would be excellent news.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#60
post #58
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do royalty free patents stop something from being free software? That would be surprising. Opus' patents have patent retaliation clauses. It would be funny if those were incompatible with the GPL, because the GPL is essentially a "copyright retaliation" license.

We ran the Opus license terms by the FSF before publishing them, and they confirmed that the terms were compatible with the GPL (v3 or otherwise).

Wasn't there an issue with a couple of companies filing IPR's with royalties that cover parts of Opus?
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