[om-council] ?==?utf-8?q? Please comment in RED!!! questions from PoliLinux

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer bero at lindev.ch
Mon Dec 12 16:07:24 EST 2016


On Monday, December 12, 2016 21:27 CET, Kate Lebedeff <kate at lebedeff.co.uk> wrote:
 > In OpenMandriva we are using the free codec FAAC 1.28, right? 

We used to. More recently, ffmpeg has come up with its own implementation that doesn't need FAAC/FAAD libraries anymore. The ffmpeg implementation is LGPL 2.1, so as far as software licenses are concerned, it's all ok.
> As far as I know, FAAC codec use the LGPL licence, and we can copy , modify and distribute. 
Yes, BUT (you knew there'd be a "but", right? ;) ) The problem with AAC is that the Nazi scumbags hold a patent on algorithms used in the format itself. There's no way around that, in order to be interoperable with AAC implementations, you have to implement those algorithms. The implementations we're using have nothing whatsoever to do with their implementation - but the algorithms have to match, therefore any AAC decoder/encoder violates patents in countries where they are valid.
Now the good news is that most of the world doesn't accept software patents.
I don't know what the current situation is in Brazil.
But as usual the big troublemakers are the US and the EU.

That's why the AAC implementations in OMLx live in the "restricted" repositories -- the code is open, the license is perfect, but in countries where bribes prevail over sanity, it can still be problematic.

In the problematic countries, there's usually thousands of insane patents covering just about anything (see e.g. http://webshop.ffii.org/). So much so that probably some 90% would get kicked if anyone dared actually file a suit about them.

Of course the "safe" thing to do is pay the mafia the ransom they're asking for. The right thing to do is to send them a couple of bags of fresh dog poop instead.
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