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Google Chrome's Inclusion of FFMpeg Vs. the LGPL
An anonymous reader writes "Google has recently added FFMpeg to Chrome to better support HTML5's video element. FFMpeg is licensed under LGPL 2.1, which states that 'if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library.' Google admits to having obtained a patent license for their use, but still claims they are not violating LGPL. Among the confused we find Håkon Wium Lie and Miguel de Icaza, who wonders what FSF might say. Google doesn't feel like asking FSF for clarification."
It's open source, what more do you want?
It's not surprising that Miguel wants in on this.
What projects has he worked on in the past decade that didn't revolve around patents by Microsoft or others?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
According to the emails I saw flying back and forth, only Chromium links against FFMPEG. Chromium is an OSS version of Chrome and thus leaves it to the user to have necessary patent rights when linking in FFMPEG.
Chrome is a different beast. Google claims that it links against the native video/audio library to handle multimedia functions.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So, what you're telling us is that although all of us in the States have been using FFMpeg illegally without a license for years, when someone finally decides to try and be legal and purchase a license, now they are still in the wrong?
Sounds like the FFMpeg people need to start dual-licensing or something - from what I can tell they are OK with people obtaining licenses to use FFMpeg.
Of course, I'm still missing the biggest point here - since when do they need FFMpeg for HTML 5 support? It doesn't require any patented codecs, and they could always use DirectShow filters.
This is obviously a grey area in the law. It's not really spelled out very clearly for regular, intelligent people to parse properly so it can be interpreted in many ways. Google's representative have said that if FFmpeg doesn't like what they're doing, they'll move to another library.
There's nothing controversial, Google isn't doing anything malicious, and they already have an exit strategy if the owners are upset about it.
if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library
See that word "if"? The patent license permits royalty-free redistribution of the Library... so it's not an issue.
Similarly, we've heard nothing from the authors of the Library - you know, the copyright owners, the only ones who have any legal standing? So maybe the peanut gallery should shut the hell up already.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I must say, it seemed more than a little ... odd ... for the founder of a completely and utterly proprietary competitor to post off-topic messages to a mailing list trying to probe his direct competitor on their adherence to a free software license.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Producing legal spagetti crapazola like that should be punishable by hanging by the nuts. F*** GPL. Go BSD, go free.
Is there really an issue here? Is it impossible to freely redistribute Chrome? According to this page:
http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html
It seems that anybody can redistribute the code and/or binaries, with the possible exception of the parts that are trademarked (similar to Mozilla).
I have to reserve judgement until I know the details of Google's patent deal. It is possible that it includes downstream use.
All patent licenses are not the same. Some are a per-unit royalty, others are a lump-sum purchase of the use of the invention. It's even possible that Google did negotiate "downstream redistribution" of the library if they paid enough cash.
From the attached article I can gather that since FFMpeg uses the LGPL 2.1 (not 3.0) that their obtaining a third party license for something else that prohibits them from granting similar rights for that bit of code does not affect their ability to grant rights for use the FFMpeg libraries. As they put it:
The fact that Party B may have a patent license with an unrelated third-party is irrelevant as long as it doesn't prevent Party B from granting people the rights LGPL 2.1 requires they grant them (namely, only those rights it in fact received from Party A).
Again this all seems rather moot anyway. A lot of operating systems these days include FFMpeg libraries as well as the H.264 and AAC libraries (which is really what this is all about). I know people feel like the idea of linking native libraries from the OS (which may or may not be there) goes against the universality of the HTML5 video/audio spec (and I can't say I disagree), but it would seem that for something as ubiquitous and freely licensable as the FFMpeg libraries, this argument is a bit overblown.
Science will save us. The question is, will it destroy us first?
I think Google's relying on a technicality, but it's a significant one. In this case Google isn't the creator of the library, they received it from it's creator. So either it's creator could grant them an LGPL 2.1-compatible patent license, or the library can be distributed without a license, or it's creator couldn't have legally distributed the library to them. I think that, right or wrong, Google's probably on solid legal ground there. They didn't introduce the patented code into the library, they didn't create the library, so I don't think the law'll have much trouble allowing them to redistribute the code under the same terms and with the same rights as they got from it's creator.
I think it's a situation the GPL and LGPL don't contemplate explicitly. The situation where Google was adding the infringing code to a library they received under (L)GPL terms and then redistributing the results, that's exactly what the v2 language covers. But I'm not sure even the v3 language covers the situation where the holder of the patent license isn't the one who put the infringing code into the library and where the person who did put it in doesn't hold a patent license and has no rights to grant downstream recipients. If the library was under LGPL v3 I think you could make an argument that the automatic grant of rights in paragraph 11 kicks in, since Google does hold a relevant patent license, and that if their license doesn't let them do what paragraph 11 requires then they can't redistribute, but LGPL 2.1 doesn't contain anything explicit corresponding to v3's paragraph 11.
I think Google's right here, it does in fact come down to what the patent-holder says. If they sue Google and get an order blocking Google from distributing infringing code, then Google can't distribute the library. If the patent holders sue the library's author and get an order blocking distribution of the library without a patent license, Google can't distribute the library. But until then, Google can't be forced to add any rights that they didn't get when they received the library.
Not FFMpeg! That is all.
Google is in the clear here.
This is tempest in a tea-cup stuff.
Steven
I don't understand this at all.
Could someone please put this into a car analogy?
They are distributing the library under the terms of the LGPL with no additional restrictions and so are complying fully with the license. Whether or not they are violating their patent license by doing so is their problem.
The situation this clause of the LGPL is aimed at is one wherein Google would be obligated by their patent license to require that everyone they distributed the program to sign a patent sublicensing agreement that took away rights granted by the LGPL.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I download it from Google. I redistribute FFMPEG under terms of the GPL. I get sued by someone for distributing something they hold a patent for. I in turn sue google on the grounds that their licensing terms indicated this would be OK and it's not. I'm not sure what the specifics would be, and it doesn't seem likely. However, I suspect anyone wanting to use FFMPEG for commercial purposes without a patent license would now get it from Google.
God damn, you can't havei both ways, you fucking swedes!
Slashdotters think copyright law is wrong and piracy is okay. Yet, they expect people to follow the copyright license of the the GPL. Which is it?
"Sufferin' succotash."
The situation this clause of the LGPL is aimed at is one wherein Google would be obligated by their patent license to require that everyone they distributed the program to sign a patent sublicensing agreement that took away rights granted by the LGPL.
Wouldn't they be able to license included libraries under different agreements to compensate for this? Or does a patent agreement not work the same as copyright agreements in that respect?
Hmm, didn't see that one coming..
Oddly, the license for the V8 assembler is listed as Copyright (c) 1994-2006 Sun Microsystems Inc. WTF?
V8 author Lars Bak used to work for Sun, so maybe he borrowed something.
In Russia, you don't need a patent license in order to use H.264 compression. Moreover, software patents and patents on algorithms are explicitly declared as invalid by the law. So, the patent clause in LGPL doesn't fire, and redistribution of ffmpeg is perfectly legal. As for the USA - it's their problem, after all. Developers of ffmpeg may just prohibit redistribution of ffmpeg in USA in order to avoid such legal questions. I don't care.
(FSF moderators, start your engines. You'll want to mod this post down to -1, to make sure nobody sees it)
Mpeg AFAIK is a freely implementable spec. Find a codec for it that uses the BSD license, or write one yourself. Problem solved.
I never use GPL licensed software at all myself unless it is unavoidable, (gcc/gmake etc, unfortunately) for precisely this type of reason.
The GPL is only a free license according to Richard Stallman's dishonest redefinition of the word "free." I consider him a fundamentally dishonest individual, and the FSF an immoral organisation, and I do not support him or them.
Don't claim my fp, bitch.
An early employee yes, an he worked with the two founders previously at Telenor but he is not one of the founders himself.
It matters what patents exist. If it is the position of the FFMpeg authors that the patent license that Google has obtained is actually required for royalty-free distribution, then nobody can redistribute FFMpeg at all.
Sorry, but this article doesnt make any sense to me. Can someone please explain the connection between google having obtained some license while distributing some software under lgpl?
...in the very end, replace "FFMPEG Developers" by "FSF" and replace "our lawyers will be suing you" by "we will generate a shitload of negative publicity around this for Chrome and Google in general,", and you have an idea of what could happen instead.
That's another example of how Google is [ab]using open source.
They only take the good part. Another example of the need to use the GPL v3 Affero version for any piece of code that could be used on internet.Starting by the Linux kernel and related utilities.
What's in a sig?
I mean how hard could it be for great google. Some hippies from EU did it. Google has both the money and the best programmers in the world, so we expect the google video encoders Beta in 3 months?
OK, you're not used to thinking. Never mind. Try to concentrate. Maybe sober up first though.
Here are two scenarios:
1) Give software away without restriction. Result: someone takes the code, incorporates it into their paid for product and using the revenue from their near monopoly blows the 'free' version out of the water. No more free version.
2) Give software away with only the restriction that you must do the same with any additions you make to it (and then, only if you distribute it). Result: software plus any additions which other people add, remain perpetually free. Big corporation has to write their own software if they want to keep it secret.
Whether or not it is a good idea to have so much freedom is another debate.
If you are to dim to see why scenario 2 is more free than scenario 1 then you are truly dim. Having the freedom to... err, take away the freedom is not a case of being more free.
I predicted this in my blog on that bastards a couple of days back. Simple solution: boycott them. The world has enough browsers controlled by monopolistic corporations already. Support Firefox.
This is not a complicated issue at all. Either ffmpeg requires patent license to use/redistribute or it doesn't. If it doesn't - no problem, nobody is in violation.
If it does then Google doesn't have a license to redistribute but neither do the authors! Hence, Google are supplying the source code under exactly the same terms so there is no ground for complaint for ffmepg's authors. The fact that Google, lets say for their own peace of mind, bought a license to use any relevant patents is frankly irrelevant and none of anyone else's business.
What a load of convoluted bollocks this is. I'm glad I'm just debugging code.
The H.264 library? Last time I checked, that was GPL, not LGPL. Complicateder and Complicateder.
It seems to me the root of Hakon's problem lies in ffmpeg itself. Ffmpeg implements the patent-encumbered algorithms to decode audio/video. Distribution of ffmpeg in countries where these technologies are not patent-encumbered is not a problem. However, distribution in countries like the U.S. has patent-implications.
Google has apparently acquired a license from the patent-holder that allows them to distribute Chrome with support for playback. However, their license makes no mention of the *implementation* or decoder that performs the playback, it simply absolves them of the patent-liability for playback.
So, they have the patent license from MPEG to distribute the functionality and the copyright license from ffmpeg to distribute the implementation.
It sounds like Hakon interprets the lgpl 2.1 to mean that they cannot distribute the implementation unless they grant their users both: a) the rights to use the functionality granted through the patent license *and* b) the right to redistribute the *patent license* alongside the copyright distribution rights granted by the implementation.
Google grants a, but not b, and they contend that the lgpl 2.1 does not require b. Their patent license doesn't address the implementation, it simply grants rights to Chrome as a whole, whatever implementation it uses.
It seems to me that distributing any lgpl 2.1 code containing patent-encumbered inventions for which there is no territory-wide royalty-free license for the territory in which its patented violates not only the lgpl 2.1, but also violates the patent-holder's rights. In this case, it seems dangerous to use the code. More and more, I'm beginning to understand the argument for pragmatism over purity in free or open source code.
I really wonder who really cares about what Icaza has to say about patents, large companies, shadowy use of LGPL.
I promise myself never to talk about Icaza and leave it to boycottnovell.org but somehow he really manages to troll me.
We all know Opera ASA is a closed source company, they claim it is their business model and it works so far. I can take their words very serious since they are the ones who managed to stand up against Microsoft instead of selling out to them and still claim they are the same company. Can we tell the same thing about Icaza guy and Novell? Come on really, one should really know when to shut up.
...and by not using H264 just because it is patented World wide, multi platform, large company adopted (including MS, that monkey boy knows) standard, they guarantee that we will see the use of video element ONLY in open source fanatic sites and perhaps Wikipedia.
Such things made what Flash has become today and they guarantee its further success as an abused plugin. It is amazing... Silverlight by its anti multi platform attitude (don't tell me about that clone), Quicktime large download bundled with iTunes, Real Networks still not getting rid of God damn bundles and their attitude, Java still not being a ultra light and fast plugin... All serves to Flash... Really amazing!
The video codec/plugin for embedding content standard is dictated by Google who owns Youtube and Youtube look alikes. It is Flash now. Very same company attempts to use a standards based method using an open source application and mini RMS people all over speaking about very deep philosophical matters.
Let me start reporting Flash bugs to Adobe again, it seems people are eager to guarantee that originally vector drawing plugin will be used for video next 5 years.
why not consider using liboggplay for basis of implementation?
It matters what patents exist. If it is the position of the FFMpeg authors that the patent license that Google has obtained is actually required for royalty-free distribution, then nobody in the US can redistribute FFMpeg at all.
Fixed.
The FFmpeg stance has allways been that 'they', not being in the US can happily ignore any patent issues, and that anyone in the US should figure out there patent problems on there own. It's, erm, "interesting" to see a big US company use a library which could never have been build in the US...