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Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

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Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#31

Post by amiga386 »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #28
amiga386 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ffmpeg, VLC and its associated projects are hosted in France. There aren't any US companies for the MAFIAA to shakedown, and if they tried to file for software patent infringement in France, the French courts would tell them to fuck off. So they go after ffmpeg's US-based users/customers instead.

Do French courts enforce patents differently?

France was one of the first countries in Europe to ban software patents, in 1968.

France is also a party to the European Patent Convention, which specifically states that programs for computers are not patentable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur...

Software patents are mainly a US-only thing.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#32

Post by duped »

doawoo wrote: post #18

Having dealt with MPEG-LA before, it makes me so wildly angry that a company composed of nothing but lawyers can suck money out of any product that wants to use a widely supported, arguably critical video codec. The process for reporting to them for sales is also horrible. Uploading excel spreadsheets to an ASP.NET backend that's barely holding together. It's minimal effort from them to leverage all possible legal ac…

I'm no lawyer but I feel like a company shouldn't have standing to contest a patent if they can't demonstrate damages, like a product losing sales because someone else is selling a competing product using technology under their patent.

And "we paid for something and want ROI" are not damages. There's no legal right to profit from an investment. You gotta use it or lose it.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#33

Post by palata »

amiga386 wrote: post #31
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do French courts enforce patents differently?

France was one of the first countries in Europe to ban software patents, in 1968. France is also a party to the European Patent Convention, which specifically states that programs for computers are not patentable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur... Software patents are mainly a US-only thing.

US people coming to complain about European regulations in 3... 2... 1...

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#34

Post by lstamour »

jamesfmilne wrote: post #23

I was under the impression you can't ship FFMPEG in an app on iOS/tvOS/iPadOS anyway given FFMPEG is licensed as LGPL.

While there might be incompatibilities with GPL and the App Store due to Apple’s insistence that developers must accept Apple’s terms to run Xcode and apps on developer devices, LGPL and other open source licenses are generally compatible with the App Store and Apple’s licenses. You can ship programs that use open source or are themselves open source within closed ecosystems by providing source code to end users via a website linked to within credits within the app. This distinction is because LGPL in particular permits more usage than GPL, allowing you to use the library in non-open source apps or those licensed under different terms, so ffmpeg has been somewhat adopted by a variety of open and closed source apps when a shared codebase is desired or particular codecs or functionality is required. That said, Apple themselves would prefer that you use their audio/video frameworks, due to device performance optimization, binary sizes, licensing and ecosystem lock-in. As far as I know, ffmpeg has adopted some of these Apple optimizations when appropriate frameworks are detected and configured at compile time.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#35

Post by cm2187 »

amiga386 wrote: post #9

> However, in 2023, MPEG LA was acquired by Via-LA, and everything changed. When I reached out to Via-LA in late 2024 to confirm FFmpegKit’s position under their terms, I received no response. The real reason. Greedy bastards, and the risk of your business being set on fire by greedy bastards, even if they don't have a right to anything - they can still threaten to waste your time and money and offer a shakedown inst…

From the article, Via-LA just didn't respond to the author, that doesn't really say anything about their position. It's a bit premature to call them greedy bastard. The author is doing this out of an abundance of caution, not in response of a legal action.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#37

Post by bsimpson »

freeone3000 wrote: post #36
bsimpson wrote: post #4

Paying contractors to support your free GitHub project is wild. Open source is beautiful and broken at the same time.

I don’t see this being broken in the slightest! What’s the issue with paying someone to write code you don’t want to?

Feeling obligated to appease unseen internet freeloaders.

If you do it because you want it for your stuff, cool.

If you do it because you feel obliged to appease "the community" who takes for granted that you support them, that's a symptom of the broken model that is open source.

Has echos of the Linux for Apple Silicon guy last week who used to be a Wii modder, tired of the support tickets from entitled pirates, moved to a niche Linux distro, and discovered a similar sense of entitlement in the issue tracker.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#38

Post by xg15 »

rwmj wrote: post #29
xg15 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except HN explicitly discourages this: You can intentionally submit either a text post or a link, but not both. For links, you could theoretically edit the title, but there too, the guidelines state that you should just use the original title from the article if possible.

Yes, it's a shame that HN doesn't include a short 1- or 2-sentence summary of each article (on the front page).

Exactly. I also think it would be interesting to know why someone decided to submit an article, so they could write their reasoning in there too.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#39

Post by rwmj »

swatcoder wrote: post #15
rwmj wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Alternately, if you're reading an article about something and realize it assumes familiarity that you don't have, stop reading it or follow your curiosity. The person who wrote the article did so for the audience of people that follow them, who would already be familiar with FFmpegkit: there would be no point to describing it because the name would be de facto known. Because the web is open, they don't have control o…

I'm not sure if I'm interested in ffmpegkit or not (because it wasn't described), but I am interested in the dynamics of open source communities, so stopping reading the article would miss the point for me.

Plus I guess as a writer you want people to read your stuff. Obviously if you don't, then don't follow all the usual rules of good journalism like the inverted pyramid, which is what I'm describing here.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#40

Post by imglorp »

amiga386 wrote: post #31
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do French courts enforce patents differently?

France was one of the first countries in Europe to ban software patents, in 1968. France is also a party to the European Patent Convention, which specifically states that programs for computers are not patentable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur... Software patents are mainly a US-only thing.

The LPF tried to warn everyone. /r/stallmanwasright

https://web.archive.org/web/20031013020204/http://progfree.o...

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