WebM Licensing Problems Resolved

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:Still no patent-related indemnification

[arose]

What rewards? How is Google not a commercial adopter of WebM? How often do companies provide indemnification for complex software? How often do they charge nothing for it? How is this any different then paying MPEG LA for essentially the same guarantees, but with more hooks and complexities?

Re:Still no patent-related indemnification

[Draek]

Because they're already exposed to risks of the sort by every other piece of software they've ever used. If you don't want that then you should be campaigning to abolish software patents, not be spreading FUD against Google.

Re:Well...

[JohnBailey]

Technicallly it's not a huge hurdle, it's getting companies to do it that's the hard part. Why give consumers a firmware upgrade that adds features when you can make them buy a newer product to get the ability? (See Android on mobiles, etc...)

Because then you don't need to give MPEG-LA any of your money in license fees?

Re:Well...

[SeaFox]

Because then you don't need to give MPEG-LA any of your money in license fees?

LMAO.

Do you honestly think companies are going to start removing h264 support from products and replacing it with WebM support because of a piddly licensing fee? The cost of the licensing fee is simply passed on to consumers and is justified with the bullet point on the product features list of "Plays back h264". Given the choice between a product and another one of similar specs that includes native playback of it I'll gladly pay a few extra dollars.

This idea that hardware companies and consumers only support a format because a non-free alternative doesn't exist is just Open Source Fanatic delusion. It's the content that drives these decisions, and that includes content already in existence. H264 already has a lot of momentum as there's already a bunch of content out there in the format. Yeah, maybe Google will switch to WebM for YouTube, and that start the ball rolling on a lot of (lousy) content in WebM... eventually. And this will drive hardware makers to add WebM to their DSPs. But it will be an also-ran format at best.

Even if Google converted all their existing site to WebM (which they aren't going to do, especially so soon after converting stuff to h264 for iPhone compatibility), there's buckets full of content other places in h264.

H264 (and it's licensing fees) is here to stay.

Correct

[Sycraft-fu]

If you read their page they specifically deny any indemnification. They note you won't be sued by and of the MPEG-LA members, of course, but if there are other patents, well you are on your own. So supposing Google held a patent over something H.264 uses and decided to sue you, well you'd be SOL and have to defend it yourself.

You only tend to find indemnification clauses in the case of very large companies, and then when the more or less developed the technology themselves are fare fairly confident that they hold all the cards.

So no, there's no indemnification of WebM. However what you do have is Google's statement that they carefully checked VP8 before and after buying On2 and they think it is clear. Google is the one company that has the resources to conduct a search like that efficiently, and they have good reason not to release this unless they are confident, as they will for sure be someone that would get sued as they have lots of money.

Also, their patent revocation license means that people might have trouble suing over WebM. So say Sony decides to sue. However it turns out their laptops have an ATi graphics chip in them that accelerates WebM (ATi has said they are going to do that). Well Sony has now lost the right to those patents and is open to countersuit. Nothing they can easily do about it, either, as nVidia is also in with WebM.

Google seems pretty confident they are in the clear, I think it is reasonable for everyone else to feel confident.