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OSI President Questions WebM Patent License Compatibility with Open Source

Posted by Unknown on from the just-a-bit-of-a-snag dept.

Via the H comes a report that the Simon Phipps, current President of the Open Source Initiative, thinks that the VP8 patent Cross-license agreeement Google brokered with the MPEG-LA is incompatible with the Open Source definition. The primary problems are that the license is not sub-licensable and only covers certain uses, leading to conflict with OSD clauses five, six, and seven. Phipps concludes: "As a consequence, I suggest the license is flawed when considered in relation to open source projects and is likely to be negatively received by many communities that value software freedom. Doubtless a case can be made that the patent license is optional, but I suspect the community issues may remain. Once again we're left with our fingers crossed. Google's making the right noises, but this draft agreement seems like a particularly unworkable approach for free and open source software. Its failure to allow sublicensing seems like a major flaw. Even if this doesn't result in a requirement for all end-users to sign the agreement, the discrepancies between this document and the OSD leave it disruptive to open source adoption of VP8."

14 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. No Big Surprise by Microlith · · Score: 2

    Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.

    Patents have no value in conveying knowledge these days, they are simply artillery for court battles and chains you can yank to control the actions of others.

    1. Re:No Big Surprise by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is why I railed against H.264 in HTML V5, as MPEG-LA made it VERY clear when Mozilla tried dealing with them that there will NEVER be any license that covers downstream, ever.

      The sad part is thanks to them being villains with good PR Apple will ram so much nasty shit through with HTML V5 its gonna be a corporate wet dream, but because so many devs dream of iMoney they won't say boo. Look at how many actually tried to excuse having HTML V5 stuck with H.264 over WebM or Theora or Drac with "Its open!". Bullshit, its a patent troll, and now its built in to the future of the web and I have no doubt Apple will get the DRM rammed through as well.

      I feel a rant coming on..To all the guys that said "Anybody but M$!" that bought Apple products to stick to teh man? You deserve this, the point was to replace MSFT with something better NOT with something worse. The sad part is how many buy the bullshit, H.264 is worse in EVERY SINGLE METRIC over the Flash that its supposed to replace, worse in CPU, memory,bandwidth, and of course while Adobe let you package Flash with anything and even let there be a FOSS spinoff without so much as a C&D you're gonna replace it with a patent troll, because St Steve of Cupertino said it should be so. Did anybody ever think, for even a second, he just MIGHT have an ulterior motive? Like how Flash would let anybody host apps and games without going through his appstore?

      What is fucking sad and pathetic is for the first time in history we have made truly insane amount of CPU power affordable to the masses, computers like something out of Dick Tracy you can throw in your pocket that can do just incredible things, and this huge web of knowledge that opens up everything, music, video, the world, yet we are gonna hand the whole damned thing over to the suits because they are good at the bullshit and they make shiny hipster toys...fuck! Wake the fuck up people, these are NOT nice guys! How many lawsuits have we seen from MPEG-LA in the past 5 years? How many from Apple? You are replacing a bumbling hamfisted company like MSFT with one that can actually pull off their nasty plans, doesn't anybody think this is a bad idea? Don't replace one master for another guys, that is just insanity.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Go with what you can get. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    VP8/WebM is the only halfway-viable competitor to h264. Don't demand perfection, you won't get it.

    1. Re:Go with what you can get. by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The only thing we wanted was a competitor that was FOSS compatible. If WebM is not that it has no use at all. Might as well stick with h264 in that case.

    2. Re:Go with what you can get. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sure. But to have any chance, the tech needs three things:
      1. It has to be very good indeed. At least as good as the existing offerings. Open source can do this - the existance of x264 shows this is true - but starting over from scratch? That's a massive project.
      2. It has to be patent-proof. That's just not possible. No way. Patents are so broad now, it'd be impossible not to violate a lot of them without even knowing about them. That's why we need google: Their big money and legal muscle let them fight the legal battle.
      3. It has to be supported by at least one major player, who has the clout to get players widely available. Not just on PCs, but embedded codecs on phones and tablets too. Distributed with browsers or operating systems, so my mother who has no idea what 'codec' means can still watch her silly dog videos on the internet.

      To ask for all that, and full ideological compliance too, is just asking too much. Not going to happen.

  3. Too little, too late by njahnke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one uses WebM. Google dropped the ball. Now even Mozilla is allowing their browser to use the underlying OS to support H.264 playback. This ship has sailed. Better luck next time.

    1. Re:Too little, too late by Air-conditioned+cowh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No one uses WebM. Google dropped the ball. Now even Mozilla is allowing their browser to use the underlying OS to support H.264 playback. This ship has sailed. Better luck next time.

      The very presence of VP8/VP9 means that the license terms for H.264/H.265 can't become too unreasonable. If they do then there is an alternative. If there is no alternative then MPEGLA can jack the license fees up as much as they wish.

    2. Re:Too little, too late by Microlith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The fees aren't what's important. It's the licensing terms and rules they seek to impose as a condition of access. The goal isn't money, it's using the rights granted by patent protection as a club to control others.

    3. Re:Too little, too late by theweatherelectric · · Score: 2

      No one uses WebM.

      YouTube does. Wikipedia does. Wired Video does. Microsoft's Channel 9 does. Revision3 does. Et cetera and so on.

  4. Mozilla by WedgeTalon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Pretty sure this is why Mozilla originally decided to instead back Ogg Theora video.

    1. Re:Mozilla by caspy7 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Pretty sure the fact that VP8 having not been released into the wild (or released at all) is why Mozilla originally backed Ogg Theora. (bonus fact: Theora is based on VP3, an earlier iteration of VP8.)

  5. H.264 Has 30 Licensors. 1,229 Licensees. by westlake · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.

    WebM is a distribution codec for the web.

    The MPEG LA licensors are a global R&D and manufacturing combine of breathtaking size, scope and power. The licensees are built on the same scale. MPEG LA

  6. Got an alternative? by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's great to write an article outlining the problem, but it would be nice if he offered a better solution. Google put WebM / VP8 / VP9 out there are open source with a strong belief that it didn't infringe the H264 patents. Turns out the scum at MPEG-LA rounded up some patents for an attack and Google has made some effort to allow use of those patents. What else could they do? Go to court and get the claims thrown out? Perhaps, but what it some are valid claims?

    We can hope that Google has a larger strategy than they are letting on. The thing to do is get WebM out there to take power away from MPEG-LA. For the short term that means Google, Android, and the major browsers have to be able to use it, and then YouTube needs to use it exclusively. Everyone else can use the code, but it's kinda hard for Google to influence other patent holders. Rather than just complain, the author and OSI should propose a better solution - there isn't one.

    BTW, your phone probably supports VP8 - Android has supported it in software since 2.3(?) and Google has made hardware implementations available for some time now with many SoC vendors licensing it (for free).

    1. Re:Got an alternative? by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

      . Turns out the scum at MPEG-LA rounded up some patents for an attack and Google has made some effort to allow use of those patents.

      Interesting that you call MPEG-LA scum, while Google _is_ _actually_ suing Microsoft over the use of h.264, right here, right now. So who is the scum?