WebM Licensing Problems Resolved 89
breser writes "The WebM licensing problems have been resolved. The copyright license is straight BSD now, and the patent license is separate and has no impact on the copyright license. Quoting Chris DiBona: 'As it was originally written, if a patent action was brought against Google, the patent license terminated. This provision itself is not unusual in an OSS license, and similar provisions exist in the 2nd Apache License and in version 3 of the GPL. The twist was that ours terminated "any" rights and not just rights to the patents, which made our license GPLv3 and GPLv2 incompatible. Also, in doing this, we effectively created a potentially new open source copyright license, something we are loath to do. Using patent language borrowed from both the Apache and GPLv3 patent clauses, in this new iteration of the patent clause we've decoupled patents from copyright, thus preserving the pure BSD nature of the copyright license. This means we are no longer creating a new open source copyright license, and the patent grant can exist on its own.'"
Re:So its still GPL incompatible because its BSD . (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So its still GPL incompatible because its BSD . (Score:1, Informative)
Your information is out of date. They're using the new and simplified BSD license, which is GPL compatible.
Re:Still no patent-related indemnification (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Still no patent-related indemnification (Score:4, Informative)
What rewards?
If it takes off, they'll control it effectively. Theoretically, others could fork it, but they'll have the expertise and the brand and the strategic partnerships in place to be the driving force. They've explained recently that they also expect huge benefits in the future from Android (similar situation as with WebM).
How is Google not a commercial adopter of WebM?
A producer, like I explained above. A producer eating its own dog food, which is normal ;-)
How often do companies provide indemnification for complex software?
In commercial licensing agreements that's the standard thing. In this case we talk about an open-source-style license that is, however, meant to be the basis for commercial adoption.
How often do they charge nothing for it?
You're basically saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" but as I explained, there are business interests involved, so this is anything but an act of charity.
How is this any different then paying MPEG LA for essentially the same guarantees, but with more hooks and complexities?
I'm not sure I understand this question well enough to answer it. H.264 is in extremely widespread commercial use, so there are strong indications that a license from MPEG LA is, in all likelihood, sufficient protection. With WebM there's some uncertainty, including that MPEG LA said it's considering putting together a patent pool for WebM...
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
This is done with programmable DSPs these days, which means making them do WebM is not going to be a huge hurdle.
Re:Still no patent-related indemnification (Score:5, Informative)
None of the MPEG-LA licensing stuff offers indemnification.
MPEG-LA is just using that WebM patent pool for FUD.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
It shouldn't take long, Firefox, Chrome and Opera have nightly builds with support for it and IE can support it through Chrome Frame.
Re:Still no patent-related indemnification (Score:3, Informative)
I know you know this, cause I know who Florian Mueller is, but I want to make it clear to the slashdot crowd that Google is granting a royalty free grant to use the patents that they own or will own related to VP8. You only lose this grant if you sue Google in patent court essentially. This is GPL3/Apache style patent clauses.
http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/ [webmproject.org]
Now real patent indemnification is very rare, especially the kind where Google would protect you from 3rd party patents. I just wanted to make that clear to the other slashdotters that may not know lots of details. You are right using VP8, you may be putting yourself at risk from other patent holders and I would personally feel much better if Google released information about its investigation into why it feels other patents, say from the MPEG-LA AVC patent pool, are not infringed. I did not want people to get the impression, simply because they're not experts, that Google might sue someone using VP8 under the terms of the Google patent grant.
Re:Still no patent-related indemnification (Score:5, Informative)
Actually I think I found text showing there was NO indemnification wrt OMS:
http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/?p=420 [conecta.it]
"While we are encouraged by our findings so far, the investigation continues and Sun and OMC cannot make any representations regarding encumbrances or the validity or invalidity of any patent claims or other intellectual property rights claims a third party may assert in connection with any OMC project or work product."
Incidentally the author makes a very good point in this quote:
"Another important aspect is the prior patent search: it is clear (and will be evident a few lines down) that On2 made a patent search to avoid specific implementation details; the point is that noone will be able to see this pre-screening,to avoid additional damages. In fact, one of the most brain damaged things of the current software patent situation is the fact that if a company performs a patent search and finds a potential infringing patent it may incur in additional damages for willful infringement (called “treble damages”). So, the actual approach is to perform the same analysis, try to work around any potential infringing patent, and for those “close enough” cases that cannot be avoided try to steer away as much as possible. So, calling Google out for releasing the study on possible patent infringement is something that has no sense at all: they will never release it to the public."
It seems I need to wait for someone to sue someone or I just consider this FUD at this point.