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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 isn't when it's inside of Chrome.
The LGPL expressly allows closed-source and even non-free-as-in-beer software to link to an LGPL library, either statically or dynamically, without violation of its terms. That's what makes it lesser than the GPL.
I agree with sentiment in the last link though, this is none of the FSF's business -- the FFMPEG people are the only ones that can claim to be aggrieved here. Until that happens, this is much ado about nothing since there can be no violation of license terms to which the holder of the copyright does not object.
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 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?
Nope, you've got it wrong. Chrome includes ffmpeg.
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020035.html
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.
Exactly. I'm taking the Mac beta for a test run as we speak. Some of the stuff is obviously still missing as noted in the recent article here a few days back. It works fairly well, and I look forward to replacing firefox with it.
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
Exactly. Unfortunately, they'll probably just say "we don't care about patents" which doesn't help anyone.
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.
In reality Theora isn't that great and Google probably wants to save bandwidth, so they support H.264. Since XP/Vista includes no H.264 decoder, Google has to ship their own.
Have you even read any of the messages on the mailing list?
Hakon is simply asking for their interpretation of the LGPL. He even says that he's not a lawyer and understands the LGPL in a different way, the way he's been trained, a spec guy. Icaza says that he's just as confused as Hakon.
How are his questions offtopic?
I think you're quite trollish.
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.
Yes, I saw what you wrote and may I quote your trollish behaviour?
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020215.html
I question the relevance to HTML5 of someone from a completely
proprietary software company closely questioning a direct competitor
on their conformance to the GPL.
Yea, you're not a troll at all.
IANAL (but I try to keep up on patent/copyright law), but here's how I think that would go:
gr8_phk: Here you are, sir. One compiled binary of FFMPEG, with source!
customer: Thanks!
patent_lawyer: Hold on there! You don't have a patent license; pay up gr8_phk!
gr8_phk: I don't need a license, Google gave me one since I got this off of Google.
patent_lawyer: Google didn't give you shit. Pay up!
Google: He's right, we didn't give you anything.
gr8_phk: Grr!
FFMPEG developers: Wait a tick there Google! You can only use our code if you give everyone who got the source from you a patent license. ...
Google: Well, that isn't the agreement we have with the patent holders. Sorry.
FFMPEG developers: Fair enough, our lawyers will be suing you for copyright infringement.
Google: Ha! You're going to sue us? I doubt it. We'll tie this up in court for years until you throw in the towel.
FFMPEG developers:
On the other hand, DannyB is an intellectual property lawyer, and you aren't. Furthermore, "the ffmpeg folks" would include "any contributor to ffmpeg", so your point is moot.
Wow, a capital letter...
http://bash.org/?367896
It is unhelpful to a lot of people, probably. But writing software to follow the particularly idiotic US law in this regard ends up being unhelpful for way more people. Reflect on the fact that the whole US population is, in a global perspective, only a very loud minority...
Christ dude, if you're going to go car analogy, you have to go full-car. Leave out FFmpeg and MPEG and all that other confusing crap and just talk about cars.
Not sure why this was modded troll, since it's factually correct. Chromium is open source, yes, but Chrome itself is not. It's a fine distinction, and I'm not sure what parts of Chrome differ from Chromium, but I think the automatic updater service is not installed with Chromium, among a few other things. I think Chromium also lacks Google branding, probably for sticky copyright issues. Of course, the parts that use FFMpeg are probably open source, although we can't say for certain since the Chrome source is not available, but there's no reason why they should be different in Chrome than Chromium.
All your base are belong to Wii.
You're misinterpreting the LGPL. The language quoted by /. above says
Now, imagine it this way:
Let A be some 3d party software covered by patents that is unrelated to FFMpeg. Let B be Chrome. Let C be FFMpeg. Google got a patent for A. The patent is unrelated to FFMpeg.
The LGPL says that if you cannot distribute C without patent royalties, then you cannot distribute C at all.
People are making one of two mistakes regarding this issue. They're either assuming that the patent Google has cover C (this is thanks to Slashdot's shitty summary that makes it sound like this, but Google points out quite clearly this is not the case) or they think the LGPL says that if any patent restricts the distribution of A contained in B, then you distribute C if it is contained in B. This is a poor interpretation of the above-quoted LGPL clause.
The last link I provided (http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020035.html) explains better than I the stance Google has taken. I think this stance is correct.
Disclaimer: I am merely a law school graduate. I have not taken the bar yet. I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. This is not legal advice.
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.
Regardless of the legality of what Google is doing, the point that only the ffmpeg folks are able to enforce the LGPL is still significant. Google's relationship with the project is likely quite good. They're sponsoring 9 students as part of their Summer of Code program. If one of the contributors were to file suit, it's likely that other project members could persuade that person to drop the suit.
Even if they are in violation of the letter of the law, they're not really in violation of the spirit of the law. They're giving back to the open source community by releasing the source to their browser. And they're paying to add new functionality to ffmpeg. The only issue is that their legal team felt the need to cover the company by purchasing a license. And they would have been foolish not to, since the threat of a LGPL lawsuit is much less than a patent infringement lawsuit. AFAIK, even if they were to lose, they would be given a chance to come into compliance. And this only becomes an issue if someone who contributed to ffmpeg feels that this minor issue merits the hassle of a lawsuit and probably end any GSoC sponsorship for the project in the future...seems unlikely to me.
So the point that only the ffmpeg contributor have standing to attempt to enforce the LGPL seems pretty important since it likely means that no one with the right to do so will go through a ton of hassle to iron out a few legal details when the company has been nothing but gracious towards the project as a whole and even towards the open source community as a whole. There's far too many companies violating the (L)GPL that are acting in bad faith attempting to leach off the open source community that would make better targets. ffmpeg even maintains a list of such companies on their site.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Reflect on the fact that the whole US population is, in a global perspective, only a very loud minority with an extremely large economic footprint.
When you look at it from that angle, the population figures become much less relevant to the discussion.
For a commercial organisation maybe, but for open-source programmers in Europe no way. They will not say "I won't implement this interesting and useful codec because people in the USA might have legal problems using it" any more than Zimmermann would have said "I won't produce PGP because it may cause legal problems for people in France using it".
No, it's very helpful. Those of us outside the USA get to use the software, those of you inside the US get to go to your respective representatives and say 'look at these people outside the USA who can use this software and gain a competitive advantage over me! Change the law so that I can use it or we will not be able to compete and your tax revenues will drop!'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I took "intellectual property lawyer" to mean works in the complex area of law surrounding contracts and licencing, and the interpretation and supposed violation of the above.
Yay me!