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Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

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Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#81

Post by jcelerier »

speedgoose wrote: post #67
jcranmer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that software is no less patentable in France (or the EU as a whole) than it is in the US. Which is to say, throw in a generic processor and it's kosher enough to get granted. (Even in the US, Alice says that "do it on a computer" isn't enough to get granted but... that's exactly what happens, and given the long, long list of European patents in the video codec space, it's clearly happening just as mu…

My suspicion is that patent offices are accepting obvious invalid patents for money.

or, like everyone, they make mistakes.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#82

Post by amiga386 »

jcranmer wrote: post #80
amiga386 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's the difference between a country where stealing is a crime, but some people commit that crime anyway, and sometimes the stealing isn't detected, and sometimes it's detected but it's not worth the cost of prosecuting the thief... versus a country with laws like "steal all you want! it's not a crime at all! in fact we actively encourage it! stealing is great!" jcranmer is trying to convince you that there…

Instead of trying to put words in my mouth, let me just say what I think: I believe software patents are no more legal in the US than they are in the EU, and this is based on SCOTUS precedent in the US that makes the legal argument for software patents very sketchy. In a just world, that would mean that pretty much all of the MPEG-LA's patent portfolio should be worthless. But I suspect that in both the US and the EU…

If you were to look it up, you'd find the European Patent Office (EPO) runs its own courts; boards of appeal, like the USPTO PTAB/BPAI. It set precedents on itself with appeal decisions and opinions. However, it is the member states (party to the European Patent Convention (EPC)) that enforce the patents they allow the EPO to issue in their name, and they all have their own laws and courts. There has been a recent development where some of the member states entered into a unitary patent court agreement.

The EPO has widened and narrowed the scope of what it considers patentable, and that gives people trying to purposefully get a patent on something that is clearly software either more or less leeway. Obviously I'd like the EPO to be even less forgiving.

But I don't think we're going to get anywhere. The EPO neither has perfect enforcement of its no-software-patents rule, nor is it easily hoodwinked with This One Simple Trick of saying it's a hardware device. The reality is in the middle, and neither of us has a good set of comparative statistics or case studies to contrast the differing EPO and USPTO approaches, so we should probably stop.

But I stick by my original claim: I believe the reason ffmpeg and VLC have not been sued to oblivion is because they're legally based in France, where the MPEG-LA's practises aren't tolerated. The support of a "no software patents" country/government/society encouraged them to develop ffmpeg without fear; the fear we see on display here today in the USA.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#83

Post by kingdomcome50 »

I had never heard of ffmpeg until yesterday. In fact, I just Googled the term because I _still_ wasn't sure what it was beyond a dependency required to utilize a huggingface model I was testing. And now here we are...

Farewell FFmpegKit. You will be missed.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#84

Post by jcranmer »

amiga386 wrote: post #82
jcranmer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of trying to put words in my mouth, let me just say what I think: I believe software patents are no more legal in the US than they are in the EU, and this is based on SCOTUS precedent in the US that makes the legal argument for software patents very sketchy. In a just world, that would mean that pretty much all of the MPEG-LA's patent portfolio should be worthless. But I suspect that in both the US and the EU…

If you were to look it up, you'd find the European Patent Office (EPO) runs its own courts; boards of appeal, like the USPTO PTAB/BPAI. It set precedents on itself with appeal decisions and opinions. However, it is the member states (party to the European Patent Convention (EPC)) that enforce the patents they allow the EPO to issue in their name, and they all have their own laws and courts. There has been a recent de…

> I believe the reason ffmpeg and VLC have not been sued to oblivion is because they're legally based in France, where the MPEG-LA's practises aren't tolerated. The support of a "no software patents" country/government/society encouraged them to develop ffmpeg without fear; the fear we see on display here today in the USA.

I strongly doubt that's the reason. Until recently, it was quite easy to sue anybody in your favorite court in the US on the flimsiest of grounds, and even after SCOTUS said "you need more than 'they sell things here' to establish jurisdiction and venue," the patent-friendly judge in West Texas seems to be trying his hardest not to listen. No, I suspect the reason is much simpler: an open source project doesn't hold enough money to be worth the cost it takes to litigate (on the order of millions of dollars).

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#85

Post by sbarre »

iambateman wrote: post #78
amiga386 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I write to the Mafia asking to confirm they won't burn my store to the ground, they won't write back saying "no". They're not obligated to respond, and they enjoy the fear, uncertainty and doubt their non-response creates.

If I ask my city if they will enforce their explicitly written zoning policy against renting a single room to a tenant, they won’t write back. But they also have no intention of enforcing that policy. It doesn’t make them evil…just bureaucratic.

Your city doesn't exist primarily to extract profits though, does it?

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#86

Post by chefandy »

echelon wrote: post #50
doawoo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all made brands for themselves Ah there's the magic word! You shouldn't have to be a "brand"... the people you listed are not who I would call "independent". Capitalism is the root of evil to all this. Sorry.

Every single indie band I like is a brand. Pardon my French, but get the stick out of your eye and lighten up a little bit about this. Not everything should be "kumbaya, my lord" neighborhood arts and crafts, string beads, hillbilly woodworking, or stay at home mom Etsy finds. You can enjoy things that have their own distinctive brand identity. Where the artist becomes inseparable from the art. Web comics, their own…

Reasoning about the universe of commercial art based solely on the tiny consumer-facing facade doesn’t work. It’s even more detached than speaking confidently about restaurant management because you go out to eat a lot. At least 90% of the moving parts are totally invisible to the consumer. The markets for indie bands, fan art commission artists, product photographers, architecture photographers, VFX artists, comedy writers, 2D animators, beachside caricature artists, branding and identity designers, textile designers, industrial designers, technical artists, industrial jewelry designers, independent jewelry artists, live TV producers, motion designers, and fine art painters, just to name a few, share many challenges, but are far too different from each other to fall under your sweeping generalizations based entirely on your assumptions about the tiny slice of it that you see. Like most “common sense” oversimplified understandings of complex problems, the simplicity you see in this topic is rooted in your lack of understanding and knowledge rather than some unique ability to find a simple solutions to complex problems.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#87

Post by lmm »

sbarre wrote: post #85
iambateman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ask my city if they will enforce their explicitly written zoning policy against renting a single room to a tenant, they won’t write back. But they also have no intention of enforcing that policy. It doesn’t make them evil…just bureaucratic.

Your city doesn't exist primarily to extract profits though, does it?

If the city bureaucracy doesn't exist primarily to provide continued employment to people of a certain class who can't or won't do something more productive, it's doing a pretty good impression of it. The purpose of a system is what it does and all that.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#88

Post by shmerl »

I think contacting patent trolls about anything like their opinion on legal matters about existing projects is a huge mistake. It only gives them the idea whom to shake down (namely you, since you contacted them)! It also probably makes it easier for them to claim that you knew about their patents when they come to shake you down. Don't feed the trolls!

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#89

Post by lmm »

duped wrote: post #56
dylan604 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case though, licensing their code is their use of the product. Don't let your ire of patent trolls lump everyone together. I'm not saying MPEG/Via-LA are angels, but they own rights to code that is used by millions while holding active licenses with people using that code.

I don't have ire for patent trolls, they exist within the system they create. I have ire for the patent business because I've read and written a number of patent applications, and see the entire thing as mostly bogus. Normally you can't win a lawsuit without proving damages. My overarching point is that buying IP with no intent to use it does not create damages when someone infringes it. And relicensing IP is not "us…

> relicensing IP is not "using" the IP to me - you either use it, or lose it. Unless of course, you're the original author (and by author, I mean the humans, not businesses that paid them)

If I come up with a brilliant new compression algorithm, but don't have the software development skills to make a robust production implementation, what difference does it make whether I hire someone to write that production implementation, license my algorithm to someone who writes that production implementation, or sell my patent rights to someone who writes that production implementation (or licenses my algorithm to someone else who does that)? Heck, given that software is fluffy abstract stuff rather than physical goods, would you consider selling a program to count, or is it only someone who makes a hardware device that uses the algorithm who gets to count?

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#90

Post by lmm »

jcelerier wrote: post #81
speedgoose wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that patent offices are accepting obvious invalid patents for money.

or, like everyone, they make mistakes.

People find it harder to notice mistakes that gain them money, and easier to notice mistakes that cost them money. It's almost magical.
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