Canonical Explains Decision to License H.264 For Ubuntu

tux writes with this snippet from The Register: "Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical has tried to clarify how — if not why — it has licensed a closed-source and patented codec for video on PCs running its Linux. Canonical is the first Linux shop to have agreed to license the codec in question, H.264, from MPEG LA. Even though Red Hat and Novell are also available for use on PCs, they have not licensed H.264."

Comments

Good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great move for the Linux community, even if some "pure" free and open source people disagree. You cant get everything at once and expect casual people to put up with "it's proprietary so we dont support it" if they want to do something, or demand them to add some Russian repositories in the apt-get config file so they can get unlicensed, pirated versions of those and break the law. No, they will just get something that works for them. And H.264 has already clearly won this round, so anyone catering for casual people has to support it.

Like TFA notes, Canonical has also previously licensed well done closed source software for Ubuntu. You aren't losing your soul if you take the best from the both worlds. In fact you are still promoting open source software, and probably way more efficiently when people actually like the system and can use it the way they want to. I honestly dont think every software in the world should be open source, but the underlying system should be. But even if you want software and standards to be open too, after getting the open OS out there the next step is to create competitive, better alternatives for the software and standards.

Be focused on one thing, dont try to fight the whole world at once.

-sopssa

Re:Good thing

[nightsweat]

So use another distro if you object.

Re:Good thing

[mugurel]

heh, and now you get modded up... but anyway, i disagree with you on fighting the whole world at once. This is about settling a standard video format for the web for the time to come. It's not something you do today and undo tomorrow. If you desire open and license free standards this is not the right time to make a compromise!

Re:Good thing

[Ethanol-fueled]

If you desire open and license free standards this is not the right time to make a compromise!

Maybe, but stuff like this needs to happen for widespread adoption of Linux, to make it legit in the eyes of the masses. The purists can always use other distros and/or hack together other working solutions. Remember, the beauty of Linux is that you always have a choice.

As an aside, I'm amused that sopssa has bad karma(excellent FP in this case). If you wanna get constant +5 first posts, you gotta play rough with the big boys, dude.

Re:Good thing

[jedidiah]

It's not like an iPad where the alternative is to give up everything useful about the platform in the process.

Turning your back on Ubuntu won't turn you into some sort of Linux-Amisher.

You are free to come and go as you like (no vendorlock).

Re:Good thing

[CowboyBob500]

They're signing up now when this thing isn't even GPL compatible. Do you have any diea what that means?

It means an Ubuntu PC will work with the majority of sites on the Internet while yours won't. Now you can moan about that as much as you like, but 99% of people just don't care - they just want their PC to work.

Re:Good thing

[jedidiah]

> Yes it means that I can play h.264 video on a Linux distro without jumping through hoops.

Except that is already the case.

You don't have to "jump through hoops" to play h264 on Ubuntu. Just try to play the file and click next a few times.

The kind of mindless FUD you are trying to spread right this very moment is why Canonical is doing this.

If you feel like jumping through hoops, try playing a generic MPEG2 file on a Mac.

Re:Good thing

[fbjon]

It's never the right time to compromise, but you have to do it anyway.

Re:Good thing

[jedidiah]

...except there is enough variation in h264 that this still doesn't constitute a standard.

"Standardizing" on h264 just gets you in the general neighborhood. It still doesn't gaurantee that your video will play on any device.

Although if you do manage to find that "lowest common denominator", you will likely find it unsuitable for more robust clients.

This isn't quite like settling on mp3 or jpg.

Re:Good thing

[DurendalMac]

People like you are the reason that desktop Linux will never really take off. You want mass market? You have to include the things that people want, and with more video going to H.264 online, what are you supposed to tell the consumers? "Sorry, this doesn't jibe with the worldview that we hold and you don't understand or care about. You just want to watch videos online, but we don't want that, so tough luck."

Re:Good thing

[DurendalMac]

Mod this guy up. A lot of hardcore FOSS advocates want everything to go open source, but they refuse to see things as they are. Right now, there are closed-source codecs, programs, operating systems, etc out there that have the bulk of many different markets. You want Linux to get more desktop market share? You will NOT be able to do it without biting the bullet and supporting some closed standards. End of story.

Re:Good thing

[Concern]

Nice pre-written bit of astroturf.

The only thing that's "clear" is that h.264 has hardly won anything yet. The round has not yet begun. Google controls youtube, and if they like VP8, and it happens to be free, look out world.

Just because Shuttleworth is buying some licenses for its OEM hardware partners does not mean you get proprietary codecs for free with your ubuntu download, unless you steal them. But this is like stealing a plastic bag. Why steal what someone else will give you for free?

Re:Good thing

[init100]

or demand them to add some Russian repositories in the apt-get config file so they can get unlicensed, pirated versions of those and break the law.

Unless the term piracy now also includes patent infringement those codecs aren't pirated. They are simply illegal to distribute in the United States because the US allows software patents, and the software is covered by such US patents. The codecs in questions are perfectly legal in any country where software is not patentable.

Re:Good thing

[dfghjk]

If you are not the customer they are trying to reach then your voice doesn't matter and money doesn't always determine who they are trying to reach. What makes you think you have anything to say?

Re:Good thing

[interval1066]

"Except that is already the case."

Right. The technical aspects of h.264 were never an issue, its always been about the licensing. I don't think this is necessarily any kind of an issue for end users so much. If you to keep your linux rig purely oss, then opt of of installing that driver. This is really an issue if you want to distribute ubuntu in your nifty new thingamabob product, puts in an extra layer of paperwork and licensing for that.
Now on the other hand, creeping non-oss is a little scary, I don't blame those who feel like a near-total freak out is in order. Canonical ultimately can do what it wants, but if it wants to keep serving the oss community (at least better than red hat did), its need to check this kind of activity to a minimum.

Re:Good thing

[timmarhy]

there's no consequences to having h.264 in unbuntu other then shit working like it should. you OSS hardliners just live in some weird parallel reality.

Re:Good thing

[Concern]

OK. easily 100x as many devices support earlier MPEG as h264. Is MPEG the double-super-special-winner?

Bluray and broadcast are not the issue here.

We are talking about the internet. The web. And marketshare. Sorenson Spark and On2 VP6 are the winners, and h264 is tiny, almost vanishing by comparison.

Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have their work cut out for them trying to force people off of free alternatives to h264. The folks behind this proprietary codec are kind of their own worst enemy - it would be very expensive and cumbersome for the world to switch to it. This is why a free codec is likely to win in the end, if any significant percentage of the users with a stake in it (such as youtube, and its viewers) get to choose.

Re:Good thing

[obarthelemy]

I disagree. I think
- Open Source should not be about less choice, but more. Are we bashing OOo for being somewhat compatible with MS's formats ? Or Linux for running on a proprietary architecture ?
- Proprietary formats are evil, underoptimized, expensive, buggy, risky long-term... Open Source should have no problems coming up with better alternatives. In this case, it seems there's a problem (hint !)
- This is Real Life, compromises must be made. Proprietary software, hardware, formats are everywhere. While rejecting any kind of proprietary stuff sounds right and/or cool, doing so would ensure almost nobody ever would choose any Open system: no MP3s, no MS Office docs, no Flash, almost no video, no SMB, ...

I'm anticipating the answer "yes, but in all those examples, the devs didn't pay ransom for a license". Indeed, but they paid for developing the features. In the end, it's money, time, talent... buying a license and getting the code may actually be cheaper, and free up resources for other projects. Even if it's not, being able to handle popular formats is probably necessary to get a foot in the door on home PCs, and later, when a better, open alternative to H.264 comes along, make the switch.

Re:Good thing

[obarthelemy]

When I request a Linux feature, the usual response is "go develop it"... If you want Ubuntu, and the WWW, to not have to use H.264, the solution is easy: develop something better.

Re:Good thing

[jvillain]

Any distro that wants to licence h.264 is no longer available for free. They will have to charge for it. I know that is what the propriatary companies want. But more importantly it's h.264 today. What do we give up tomorrow? ODF? Do we start licensing MONO? What standards do we start doing away with? HTML?

To me Ubuntu has never been a part of the open source world. They have always shown that they are willing to throw the rest of the open source world under the bus if it will get them market share or help them generate more revenue. I have absolutely no doubt that Ubuntu will soon be wrapping it's self in all the DRM they need to be just like Microsoft and Apple. Even if that means locking you out of parts of the system to make it happen.

Re:Good thing

[aj50]

This isn't about open source, there exist completely open source decoders and encoders for h264.

This is about patents and the costs and consequences of licensing them.

Re:Good thing

[dunng808]

You want mass market? You have to include the things that people want, and with more video going to H.264 online, what are you supposed to tell the consumers? "Sorry, this doesn't jibe with the worldview that we hold and you don't understand or care about. ..."

This is not born out in the real world. Apple still refuses to put Flash on the iPhone / iPad. Microsoft has made switching browsers as hard as possible, and it took a federal lawsuit to force AT&T to allow customers to use their modems on the Bell phone system. The mp3.com web site was a popular and valuable promotional tool for indi artists (that is where I first heard Skylab 2000 and other European techno groups) until the US entertainment industry sued them into oblivion. No, big corporations do not give their mass market customers what they want. They really do say "I peece on you."

I am not a hard core FOSS guy, but I do agree with Stallman's reasons why software should be free. I was there when AT&T tried to kill BSD and claim all the Unix code as their own. More recently we saw something similar from SCO. We must not forget those lessons. If we allow all video to go closed source we will be pwned.

Re:Good thing

[natehoy]

This is a serious question. Not buying a product and advising anyone who will listen to do the same is one thing, but how exactly does one provide negative feedback to an Free Software project?

First, an apology: I've really worked hard to keep this post from sounding confrontational, and it's honestly intended not to be. However, some of my wording might not express this as clearly as I'd like. None of this is meant to offend you, or to criticize your opinions or preferences in any way.

The ideal answer is to find a distro that fits your needs, then donate effort or money toward forwarding the project you agree with. I mean this without intending offense when I say that there are plenty of other excellent penguins in the sea, and you will find one that is right for you.

Canonical apparently is not, based on your own comments. They accept feedback, they react to it, but they also need to make decisions, and not all of those decisions are going to agree with what everyone who uses their product wants. Their stated goal is to be easy to use and support as much hardware and software (including codecs) as they possibly can. This is what they do.

Canonical is not made up of GPL purists, nor are they made up of OSS purists. They've never, ever claimed to be, and I don't think they should be. They are made up of a group that is trying to make Linux a viable, useful alternative for people who would have a stroke if they had to pull up a command line, and what everything they want to do supported out of the box. Their target market wants MP3. They want ATI/nVidia binary support. They want H.264. And they want it all legal and legit. Which means it's a perfectly logical decision for Canonical to license these technologies where they need to.

There are many hundreds people with varying levels of comfort with (pick your topic: GPL/binaries/FOSS/IP-protected stuff) who have their own distros, and they've refused to install all the stuff they don't like. Many of those folks also work hard on reproducing or even reverse-engineering open source drivers and codecs of their own to avoid closed source and patent-protected stuff. Much of that goes to clean up other distros, even Ubuntu, which to a Linux purist is a poxy whore from the wrong side of the tracks, but to the average Linux newbie is a safe haven from CLI hell. Neither is wrong.

Canonical is forwarding the Linux movement in their own way, which is to get a copy of something that non-techies can live with on their desktops. And that includes support for things that people want to use. Things like MP3, H.264, FAT, NTFS, Adobe Acrobat, Flash, and the list goes on. That means a dumbed-down desktop, lots of GUI tools, a "user privilege escalation" (SUDO) model, and a lot of things that give Linux or GPL or OSS purists the screaming heebie jeebies. And that is exactly as it should be - Linux is FREEDOM, and not everyone should be forced into the same exact model.

What stick does one wield if monetary punishment is not a viable option?

You don't. Unless you've somehow contributed, you don't have any leverage with someone who's given you something for free with no conditions attached.

Canonical is making what they think people want. They have a reporting system, and people use it a lot. Just look at the angst and gnashing of teeth surrounding the "moved window controls to left" issue. They do accept feedback on their decisions. But not everyone agrees on everything all the time. Sometimes, a lead developer just says "you know what? I'm the head asshole in charge, I'm doing the work here, and I'm going to wade in and shut down this long discussion because it's my project, and I occasionally get to call the shots, and this is the way it's gonna be."

This is more about how communities communicate to the 'executive' team to produce a product that folks can be happy with.

Most of their target market is not going t

Re:Good thing

[dunng808]

True, but in practice many FOSS folk use "open source" to include "patent and royalty free." And, just to be clear, an open source program can, according to a few well placed people, infringe upon patents.

Re:Good thing

[Patch86]

How have they "pissed all over it"? Debian still exists, and is still thriving.

The very definition of open source is "you can take this code and do what you like with it (within legal limits)". You can't very well whine that they've done something you don't approve of with the code. If you want control over your source, keep it closed.

Re:Good thing

[infinitelink]

Wanted to add to your comment's other replies. Ubuntu has taken the lead and shown "Debian, how it should be"--not in the sense of "you shouldn't be purist", but rather "you're design-by-committee stance has been too slow, ineffective, etc.", not by saying it aloud, they've surely cooperated heavily, but by demonstrating it. Ubuntu has been a refreshing influence for Debian, and after having gone so far ahead that they lost binary compatibilities, they're even willing to work together with it to bring things back together.

I'd personally like to see more reverse of that influence: more tidiness, speed, etc., in Ubuntu: not less features, necessarily, (though those can cause the loss of speed), but rather higher code quality. I believe that Ubuntu's work, besides being from the "unstable" category branch of Debian, does indeed contribute back to Unstable, however, so maybe that's less of a problem--and that also depends on how much Debian accepts: I hope they'll increasingly accept more and improve upon the quality, implementations, etc., to round-out and enrich their base distro: Debian is, after all, a huge storehouse, and little more, for a bunch of software that's not really all that usable, tightly integrated, etc., but "available" for others to take and modify, improve upon, etc., as-needed: that's its strength. Usability is Ubuntu's, and I believe that strength is a benefit to Debian.

Here's to hoping for a stronger cooperative, collaborative, ecosystem of code, with many ideas and implementations, and where the smartest (for the environment) wins out among the Democratic in terms of user-numbers, while the right tool for the right jobs wins-out in case-by-case situations. : )

p.s. I realize I used "etc." a lot. : (

Re:Good thing

[infinitelink]

Gee, they provide the most usable end-user distro despite the flailing, ineffectiveness, and vitriol of the community they work within; they sponsor other FOSS projects heavily; they hire people from various other parts of the FOSS community knowing that by making sure those people have jobs they not only get improvement in their own distro, but those people can keep working in their respective FOSS projects' code-bases.

The Kernel is not all there is nor all that matters, and relatively speaking the kernel is of the most interest and benefit to the huge private corporations, while the stuff Canonical touches is of the most interested to the regular users--and even not-so-regular, however--alike.

Re:Good thing

[BobPaul]

Look up some basic patent definitions; you don't even need to get into patent law.

Patents protect the owners from others selling/distributing infringing products. They give the patent owners a monopoly on the sale/distribution of these products. A competing company, however, is free to product infringing products for internal testing, etc as long as they don't distribute them in anyway. This is why you see generic drugs appear on the market the DAY the patents expire. They completed their FCC testing using infringing copies of the patented drugs, using the patent as a a design guide, no less. This is legal because the drugs are only used for study and any not used by study participants are destroyed. The company doesn't sell the infringing drugs, or even distribute them freely, until the patents expire (at which point they aren't infringing).

Drugs certainly aren't an exception by any means, and all patented items fall under the same laws. Generics of all popular products release as soon as the original patents expire if competitors haven't found non-infringing work arounds. They don't appear months afterwards because they already designed against the patent and tested, waiting for their chance to sell.

Re:Good thing

[WeatherGod]

Canonical does not do many kernel patches. However, they are a major contributer to the desktop environment. In addition, the "patches submitted" metric might be misleading. The focus with the Ubuntu community has been diagnosis of problems (if possible), and upstreaming bug reports with as much detail and information as possible. That is a perfectly valid contribution to the Linux community in my book, especially given the variety of hardware configuration that Ubuntu encounters.

Re:Good thing

[natehoy]

Ah, but fortunately "pissing all over it" in the Linux world means the original is still there, safe, secure, and quite unaffected.

Well, except where Ubuntu has submitted significant bug fixes back the Debian. If that's "pissing all over" something, then I need to start getting pissed on.

This is how Linux works. Everyone gets to play with copies of the same code. Some people play with it one way, some people play with it another. Everyone who pays attention sees opportunities to adapt what others are doing, or do the same thing a different way they feel is better.

It's like kids in a sandbox. As long as everyone gets to play with all the sand, various kids watch and learn from each other. One child adds a little water and says "look! I can model this!" Other children either emulate it and optimize sand/water ratios for various types of modeling, decide that modeling sand isn't their thing and go about their business, or (in the case of comments like the one I am replying to) scream "THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO WITH SAND!!!! STOP THAT!! YOU'RE WRONG!!! WET SAND IS WRONG!!! SAND SHOULD BE PURE!!!"

You can't do anything bad to a Linux distro unless you somehow corrupt its master source management tool. You can make your own copy, and you can do something with it that the original author might not like, but since the "original author" is using a codebase that is the result of the work of many thousands of people over decades, no one person gets to dictate what constitutes proper use, and what constitutes pissing all over it. As long as all of the users comply with the appropriate licensing requirements behind the code they are using (GPL, LGPL, trademarks on specific distro names, artwork copyright, etc), the original author has no say over how his or her code is eventually adapted and applied.

That's what "Open Source" means. Anyone can do anything they want with the source, and as long as they share their work when asked, no one can tell them not to. Not Linus Torvalds, and certainly not user "dunng808" at Slashdot.

Re:Good thing

[walshy007]

What I don't understand is how Ubuntu (or OEMs) could take a GNU/Linux base, add non-free and patented components, and sell the result as a unit. Doesn't the GPL prevent this?

Not at all, so long as they provide source for all the gpl licensed things, people are free to write commercial software for linux just fine.

Using linux syscalls does not make a program gpl, linking to a gpl library does, but that's what the lgpl is for and why most libraries are under the lgpl.

Re:Good thing

[timbo234]

or demand them to add some Russian repositories in the apt-get config file so they can get unlicensed, pirated versions of those and break the law.

I mostly agree with the rest of your post but this part is just FUD. Firstly, the x264 project is not pirated software, it's an open source implementation of H264. Secondly, and most important, software patents are only really valid in one country with particularly skewed laws, the USA. Even there you'd need to spend minimum US$1 million on a patent lawsuit to see if the patent is even valid, let alone whether it applies to someone using it privately on a home computer.

I don't know about Ubuntu but for Opensuse the patented media codecs are hosted by the Packman project, a perfectly legitimate packaging project based in Germany that provides around 5000 extra packages that aren't in the main Opensuse repo.

Re:Good thing

[tehcyder]

IIRC, posts modded Funny does not give any karma bonus.

No, but if you're lucky someone mods a joke as +1 informative

WHY?

[blackraven14250]

Since the general goal of Ubuntu is to reach out to the average computer user, rather than the power user or enterprise as most other distributions aim for, the question of "Why did they license a codec that most major companies are throwing support behind?" shouldn't really need to be asked.

Re:WHY?

[AvitarX]

I'm pretty sure they didn't display it because they made changes to it and mozilla said "this ain't our firefox"

Since then they changed it to mozilla's firefox with ubuntu extensions installed.

heh

[Pojut]

Wine all you want, open-source fanatics. Our HTPCs are getting quite a nice boost in usability.

Re:heh

[ClickOnThis]

Wine all you want, open-source fanatics.

[Emphasis mine.] I think you meant whine. Oh wait, maybe you didn't.

Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[Anonymous Coward]

The writing's on the wall here, kids. H.264 is where web video is going.

Theora's a non-starter, and unless VP8 is stunning as fuck and Google indemnifies everyone and his kid brother against lawsuits, it's not going anywhere either.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[calmofthestorm]

It'd be easier to fight h264 if it weren't so damn good.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[node 3]

I don't know about you but I was in direct contact with MPEG-LA lawyers recently about their licensing terms (confusion over what constituted commercial use,) and given the terms of their licensing as stated and clarified directly to me, I'll not be surprised to see many, many sites ditching H.264 in favor of something free.

H.264 is not going away. Those that make money from it can afford the license. For those that don't, it is free. There's no way at all that any major commercial site is going to ditch H.264 for Theora. None. At. All.

You may think theora's a non-starter but you know what, you're all focused on technical limitations and other bullshit

Not technical limitations. Quality. Theora just doesn't have it.

when you should worry about "DOES IT FUCKING WORK OR NOT?" That answer is yes, and since it does work, it's viable enough.

But it doesn't "fucking work". Well over 99% of computers in use today cannot play Theora over the web. If you ditch H.264 in favor of Theora, congratulations, you just ensured that the overwhelming majority of users can not use your site. That would have to be the single most idiotic business move imaginable. While you're at it, you might as well only offer your content in Klingon.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[Big Boss]

Not the mentioned hardware accelerated on EVERYTHING. My cell phone has hardware acceleration for h264. OGG? no. VP8? no. Can the CPU do it? no. Well, h264 it is then. It's fine to say we should push for open codecs, but when I can't play the videos encoded with them on my equipment...... Google and VP8 are probably our best chance here, if Google can push for hardware supported VP8 in Android equipment, they might be able to stem the tide. If they care. They already have h264 licenses.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[c0d3g33k]

You're forgetting ACTA which is the attempt to transform 'misinformed garbage' into reality without anyone realizing it until it is too late. Do not underestimate those who wish to control you. Sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "la la la la" will not be enough to ward them off. Take this seriously and make sure this does not spread to where you live. The first step is not to smugly point out that it doesn't apply to you where you live, but to help those trying to fight it before it spreads to you.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[rawler]

Since when had technological advantages had anything to do with business decisions?

Both Apple and Microsoft, two of the more influential forces in the decision, are stakeholders in MPEG LA. Add the fact that they both probably feels slightly anxious over the seemingly immortal Open Source guys, that just refuses to keel over, but invades market after market. Considered they had the chance to throw a monkey-wrench right into their common enemy, Open Source Software, and I think the decision was made completely without regard to technology.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[bad_sheep]

Don't forget to add Opera, Chrome... I don't even talk about applets such as Cortado or plugins (VLC...) !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora#Native_browser_playback

Actually, on the desktop side, I would say h264 is less present than theora. Obvisously, this is not the case in the embedded world.

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[roca]

Many phones can in fact "hardware accelerate" Theora and other codecs. See for example http://blog.mjg.im/2010/04/16/theora-on-n900.html

Re:Uh, cause that's where everyone's headed?

[Tacvek]

Ah, but there is a damn good chance your phone does have the hardware needed for hardwae support of VP8 and Theora. Most mobile devices supporting hardware acceleration are using a general purpose DSP, which should be able to accelerate those other codecs too. All that is lacking is software support for the acceleration.

For example every mobile device using a TI OMAP2 or OMAP3 system-on-a-chip has no h264-specific core but do have either a TMS320C55x DSP or an IVA2 or IVA2+ core. Those later cores can be use to accelerate any form of modern video decompression.

Thus, much of the market is a lot less invested in H.264 than you would think.

Re:Closed Source?

[keeboo]

Some people are confusing patent issues with closed-sourcedness.

Lawyers win-win

[Elektroschock]

It would be more sustainable and cheaper to invest in patent reform than to license trivial patents of course...

Re:Lawyers win-win

[ClosedSource]

A lot of people around here talk about "free as in freedom" but what they really care about is the "free as in beer" that usually results. A lot more Slashdotters consume music illegally than they do create and distribute derivative works of FOSS.

Re:Lawyers win-win

[jmcvetta]

consume music illegally

Gosh that's a wonderful statement. So much better than all the 'property' sophism and 'compensation' demands that one usually sees. It captures, with uncommonly bare honesty, everything that's wrong with anti-sharing ideology.

"Sir, it is illegal for you to listen to that song!"

Misleading title and summary

[armanox]

Reading the article and linked articles points out that this only applies purchased copies of Ubuntu and not the downloaded version that everyone seems to adore.

It sounds just like Shuttleworth

[Concern]

He's willing to compromise on doctrinaire software freedom issues in order to grow his marketshare. I'm impressed he can afford to buy it and give it away even to their OEM vendors. One wonders what terms this was made on, and how sustainable it is. But to be clear - this does not come free with each download of Ubuntu. It's part of a deal where money is getting made through the sale of hardware.

You can look to Android for similar policy, I'm sure.

It might also have the effect of embarrassing some of the folks who had aspirations of hurting Linux adoption by trying to lock the world into a proprietary video codec. It will hurt, but the effect will not be as black and white as it was in the past.

The real endgame here is still getting an open codec in an open standard for web video. I think the commercial interests have finally woken up to how much the proprietary codec world has hurt them, and how much they have to gain by escaping. It's not just a problem for Linux and the FSF - proprietary codecs are a big problem for everyone who produces and consumes video.

In a perfect world, where users could unbundle and pay ala carte for commercial vs. free codecs, they would not buy them (they're not worth much vs. what we can do for free), and producers would not be saddled with encoding for them, and everyone would be quite a lot happier.

HOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since TFS is so suckily misleading, I actually RTFA this time. Everybody's been saying it's legally impossible for Mozilla to license H.264 for Firefox, because MPEG LA requires a limit on the number of installs or something. Of course since Ubuntu is freely distributable, all the same arguments would apply. So WTF?

But it turns out this doesn't mean licensing the codec for the installs we end users make from the ISOs we've downloaded and burned or anything. It's about offering OEMs the option of licensing it for preinstalled copies of Ubuntu.

Focus

[Enderandrew]

Canonical can focus on keeping the FSF happy, or they can focus on trying to someday turn a profit and brining sustainability to their company.

Why do they need to justify this decision? It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Re:HOW? -- mod parent up

[olden]

Please mod parent up; so far this seems the only informed comment on this thread (sigh).
Link to TFA: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-clarifies-its-H-264-licence-993182.html

Re:Thank The FSF/GNU Nutcases

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Does that mean we have to give up Hurd?

Closed source? No.

[nielsm]

Huh?

H.264 is not "closed source", it's an open standard with open source encoders (famous x264, everything points to it being the best quality encoder available anywhere) and decoders (libavcodec), it's just that a bazillion companies have patents that cover every corner of video coding. It might be "unfree", but it's certainly not "closed source" or "closed standard" or "proprietary".

Re:Closed source? No.

[unix1]

it's an open standard with open source encoders

I don't know what definition of "open source" you are using or what you think it means in your mind, but that's not a generally accepted definition.

I'm not going to cite hardline FSF views. Instead have a look at generally considered "pragmatic" OSI:

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:
1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

So, yes - open source does mean you need to be able to freely redistribute the source, otherwise what's the point?

If you go down that road, you'd be able to convince yourself that MS Windows is "open source" too since MS has given the Windows source code to some governments and biggest customers. They just can't redistribute it or make it public.

Re:Closed source? No.

[drinkypoo]

H.264 is not "closed source",

Irrelevant. It would be a straw man if people didn't keep saying that H.264 was undesirable because it's closed source. It's not; there's no source, it's a standard. It is not, however, an open standard because you must pay to receive the full standards (it costs money just to download a competent summary of the standard, in fact) and it must be licensed to be used, and that is the antithesis of an open standard.

That article is wrong.

[kidjan]

First of all, H264 is not a "closed-source..codec"--this is complete nonsense. The standard itself is completely published and documented, and there is nothing stopping open source projects from creating H264 encoder and decoders. And have they ever--hands down, the best H264 encoder implementation today is x264, which is licensed under the GPL. The patent issue is totally separate, but let's not conflate "patented" with "open source." The real issue with H264 is who will pay royalties for the patents. For Windows 7 and OSX, MSFT and APPL pay those royalties. In the case of Ubuntu, it makes it easier for commercial entities to distribute Ubuntu if they know royalties and licensing fees are already being handled. So to be honest, this just makes Ubuntu an easier sell to PC manufacturers because they aren't liable for royalty costs or hidden "gotchas"

The pragmatist

[westlake]

H.264 licensors include fifteen of the biggest names in global manufacturing and tech.

Mitsubishi. NTT. Philips. Samsung. Toshiba....

The 817 licensees include hundreds of other names the geek should recognize.

H.264 support is in the cell phones they make.

Web cams. Camcorders. Video game consoles. Mobile Internet devices and PCs of every description. Industrial and security video. Broadcast, cable and satellite technologies.

Theatrical production and home video. The set-top box. The Internet enabled HDTV.

Mozilla's Firefox can ignore H.264 in the browser.

But Mozilla can't keep Amazon.com from stocking 3,500 flavors of the H.264 HD camcorder, priced from $125-$5,000.

It can't get shelf space for the non-existent Theora or VP8 product in WalMart.

There are some things a commercially viable OEM Linux PC must deliver at retail. H.264 support is one of them. It needs to be in hardware. it needs to competitive - and it needs to be there today.
   

Re:H.264 IS OPEN SOURCE!!!!

[dangitman]

We can argue symantecs

Or, we could argue Nortons and McAffees.

Re:I have seen the comparisons...

[kidjan]

Are you serious? http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=102 In particular, http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/quality_chart1.png No contest, Theora gets whooped. So do most h264 implementations, compared to x264 for that matter, which is probably why most companies these days are moving towards that encoder implementation.

Re:Closed Source?

[arose]

The OSI disagrees with you, not that it will stop you from trying to bend the definition to where you want it to be...

Re:Closed Source?

[lennier]

Some people are confusing patent issues with closed-sourcedness.

This is why software freedom is a more useful term, because it doesn't just require the source to be available, but that it not contain any legal encumbrances - copyright, patent, trademark or any others - which prevent end-user modification and redistribution with the same rights as they received.

H.264 in jail

[Skapare]

If the H.264 code binary can be run in user space, non-root, in a chroot jail, then my issues with it are just philosophical and not enough to prevent me from running it. I prefer open source. But I'm not opposed to running binary code. I'm also not opposed to paying for it.

What I am opposed to is borging my computer by running un-inspectable code as a kernel module, root process, or even an unjailed user process. I do not trust corporations to do things right. I'm not going to give permissions to untrusted code. And if I can't read the source, it's untrusted ... by definition.

Oh. Boo Freaking Hoo

[Petersko]

"And they accomplish this by starting with one of the purest open-source distros around -- Debian -- and then pissing all over it."

And why, exactly, does that bother you? It shouldn't, but apparently it does. Did they send someone over to specifically piss on your copy of Debain?

Or are you just assuming you've been wronged somehow in the process? Because I'll bet your life is not one iota different than it would have been had they not started with Debian. Except, of course, for the fact that you can now complain about them.

Re:Oh. Boo Freaking Hoo

[macshit]

"And they accomplish this by starting with one of the purest open-source distros around -- Debian -- and then pissing all over it."

And why, exactly, does that bother you? It shouldn't, but apparently it does. Did they send someone over to specifically piss on your copy of Debian?

Or are you just assuming you've been wronged somehow in the process? Because I'll bet your life is not one iota different than it would have been had they not started with Debian.

Actually I'll bet it is.

Canonical's use of Debian as a base has had both good (some good press for debian as a side-effect of canonical's aggressive hype machine, and more people that are familiar with debian tools and infrastructure) and bad (many people who might otherwise help with debian help canonical instead, and the flow of fixes etc back to debian is at best spotty) effects on Debian, but it's surely had an effect.

I think what bothers many Debian users though, is simply the issue of "credit" -- though Canonical has done some good (and bad) work itself, through its aggressive self-promotion and targetting of new users, it inevitably ends up getting credit for stuff that's actually due to its Debian base, and I think some people feel that Canonical does not make enough effort to give Debian its due share of that credit.

Re:Oh. Boo Freaking Hoo

[glennpratt]

Fixes:

http://patches.ubuntu.com/

Credit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/Debian

I really don't know much about the history here, but this all seems pretty lame. Ubuntu doesn't hide it's Debian roots at all (it doesn't take much poking around to run into a Debian logo, .deb, etc). Also, Debian itself is based on a bunch of other works, it's how the community works.

For me, Ubuntu has been the up-to-date but still useable Debian; if I hadn't gotten used to the Debian world via Ubuntu, I would still use CentOS/RedHat on servers.

Re:Thank The FSF/GNU Nutcases

[victorhooi]

heya,

You realise it's these "kooks" that gave us the OSS legacy we're using now, right?

And now little punks like you are using that legacy, and telling them to bugger off...

I would have thought your parents would have taught you better.

Look, I think Stallman and co are seriously wacky as much as the next person, but it's actually thanks to people like him that the FSF and OSS even got off the ground. So I think we should at least give them credit for that. And it's a real shame when grassroots people like him, or say, all those civil liberties groups, whom us mainstream people love to write off as crazy hippies - we reap all the benefits of all their campaigning and what not, then act like ungrateful brats to them.

It's not to say you can't make fun of them, or say they're a bit loopy, but saying we should "jettison" them? Are you willing to jettison all the work they've done as well, and go back to a Windows and Apple only world? Heck, even Slashdot runs on OSS...willing to give that up?

Cheers, Victor

Closed source? No. Closed Standard? Yes.

[SgtChaireBourne]

You liars are annoying. H.264 is still a closed standard and it does not matter how many Microsoft Partners tell you that closed is open or that open means "buy our stuff". H.264 fails on points 2, 3, and 4 of the formal definition of open standard:

1. The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
2. The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
3. The relevant copyright and patents for the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
4. There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard

Canonical is free to re-sell proprietary standards, but let's not pretend that helping establish vendor lock-in was or is a goal of Free and Open Source Software. Oh, wait, Canonical is not re-selling H.264 except for the OEM editions. The rest of you are still on the hook for the bill because it is merely a distributor. I notice that the enGadget article on H.264 patents leaves out the price for the third category obligated to pay under patent law: the user. GIF should have been a lesson about software patents.

Obviously the Microsoft Party and its members have problems with the above definition and seek to disparage it and the process itself. Keeping the second version of the European Interoperability Framework clean, free from M$ damage, takes work.

How much of Ubuntu is Ubuntu?

[Kickasso]

I wonder what happens if I swap an Ubuntu kernel for my own kernel, configured and compiled by myself. Do I still have a licensed Ubuntu system? Even if the kernel is from vanilla sources? What if I replace their libc? How about gnu userland, I hear there are alternatives? Do I have to use Canonical's repositories for my updates? Maybe I can switch to rpm or even portage-based package manager, do I still have an Ubuntu? It should be feasible to port Debian/FreeBSD to the Canonical platform, is it OK to use Ubuntu/FreeBSD system? In short, how much of Ubuntu can I leave in the system to be still considered a licensee?

I also wonder whether smart lawyers at MPEG LA have answers to these questions. Or maybe they have no idea of what Linux is about.

Ubuntu is a quisling

[tomhudson]

What ever happened to "Don't feed the patent trolls?"

Ubuntu LIES

Ubuntu core applications are all free and open source. We want you to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Is an h264-enabled web browser a core application? An h264-enabled video player? Etc., etc.

So much for their "philosophy"

Our Philosophy

Our work is driven by a philosophy on software freedom that aims to spread and bring the benefits of software to all parts of the world. At the core of the Ubuntu Philosophy are these core philosophical ideals:

1. Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees.
2. Every computer user should be able to use their software in the language of their choice.
3. Every computer user should be given every opportunity to use software, even if they work under a disability.

Our philosophy is reflected in the software we produce and included in our distribution. As a result, the licensing terms of the software we distribute are measured against our philosophy, using the Ubuntu License Policy.

we are working to ensure that every single piece of software you need is available under a license that gives you those freedoms.

Currently, we make a specific exception for some "drivers" which are only available in binary form, without which many computers will not complete the Ubuntu installation. We place these in a restricted section of your system which makes them easy to remove if you do not need them.

More about components>
Free software

For Ubuntu, the 'free' in 'free software' is used primarily in reference to freedom, and not to price - although we are committed to not charging for Ubuntu. The most important thing about Ubuntu is that it confers rights of software freedom on the people who install and use it. It is these freedoms that enable the Ubuntu community to grow, continue to share its collective experience and expertise to improve Ubuntu and make it suitable for use in new countries and new industries.

Quoting the Free Software Foundation's 'What is Free Software', the freedoms at the core of free software are defined as:

1. The freedom to run the programme, for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how the programme works and adapt it to your needs.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
4. The freedom to improve the programme and release your improvements to the public, so that everyone benefits.

Open source

Open source is a term coined in 1998 to remove the ambiguity in the English word 'free'. The Open Source Initiative described open source software in the Open Source Definition. Open source continues to enjoy growing success and wide recognition.

Ubuntu is happy to call itself open source.

I'm sure Ubuntu is happy to call itself "open source". I'm going to call it "Quisling".

Oh, and it's STILL fugly. Can't you get someone who isn't chromatically challenged to at least make this pig look a bit less like a sows' ear?