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WebM Licensing Problems Resolved

Posted by Soulskill on from the that-didn't-take-long dept.

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.'"

6 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Still no patent-related indemnification by FlorianMueller · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's no doubt that Google has made an effort to make its licensing terms more consistent and compatible with existing FOSS licenses. Maybe some of this could have been resolved beforehand if Google had talked to such organizations as the OSI and FSF.

    But one important problem remains even with the new licensing terms: there's no indemnification or holding harmless in the event of patent-related problems. I asked at the end of this blog post whether it would be fair for Google to reap most of the rewards if WebM becomes a success while the commercial adopters of WebM would bear the risk in case things go wrong on the patent front. By not even providing some basic indemnification, Google calls into question that it's really sure there aren't going to be any problems.

    1. Re:Still no patent-related indemnification by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Informative

      None of the MPEG-LA licensing stuff offers indemnification.

      MPEG-LA is just using that WebM patent pool for FUD.

    2. Re:Still no patent-related indemnification by FlorianMueller · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What is your response to the assertion that multimedia isn't the patent minefield that everyone wants to (make us) believe?

      There are now different positions on WebM. In my blog post I actually mention all of them, including (in an update) Carlo Daffara's analysis, which is rather optimistic about WebM not infringing MPEG LA's patents. I never said that it does, but I admit that MPEG LA's statement that it may put together a WebM patent pool is nothing that I would advise anyone to discount as a possible scenario.

      What I do say is that Google will have the biggest benefit if this works out, hence I believe it would be reasonable for Google to provide not just vague assurances but a detailed analysis of the patent situation and some form of indemnification. One key difference between H.264 and WebM is that H.264 is already used in countless commercial products, so if anyone could assert any rights against it, it normally should have happened, while VP8 has so far had much less market penetration but if it became (like some propose) part of HTML 5, then this could change overnight and result in patent enforcement.

    3. Re:Still no patent-related indemnification by mzs · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually I think I found text showing there was NO indemnification wrt OMS:

      http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/?p=420

      "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.

  2. Re:So its still GPL incompatible because its BSD . by EricJ2190 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am no expert on licenses, but according to GNU, the 3-clause BSD license used by WebM is GPL-compatible. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses

  3. Re:Well... by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is done with programmable DSPs these days, which means making them do WebM is not going to be a huge hurdle.