[whatwg] Google's use of FFmpeg in Chromium and Chrome Was: Re: MPEG-1 subset proposal for HTML5 video codec

[Daniel Berlin]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:51 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Daniel Berlin <dannyb at google.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Daniel Berlin <dannyb at google.com> wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>>>>  I would, however, get in trouble for not having paid patent
>>>>> fees for doing so.
>>>> No more or less trouble than you would have gotten in had you gotten
>>>> it from ffmpeg instead of us, which combined with the fact that we do
>>> For the avoidance of doubt,
>>> Are you stating that when an end user obtains Chrome from Google they
>>> do not receive any license to utilize the Google distributed FFMPEG
>>> code to practice the patented activities essential to H.264 and/or AAC
>>> decoding, which Google licenses for itself?
>>
>> I'm not saying that at all. I'm simply saying that any patent license
>> we may have does [not] cause our distribution of ffmpeg to violate the terms
>> of the LGPL 2.1
>
> I now understand that your statement was only that Google's
> distribution of FFMPEG is not in violation of the LGPL due to patent
> licenses. Thank you for clarifying what you have stated. I will ask no
> further questions on that point.
>
>
> But I do have one further question:
>
> Can you please tell me if, when I receive Chrome from you, I also
> receive the patent licensing sufficient to use the Chrome package to
> practice the patents listed in MPEG-LA's 'essential' patent list for
> the decoding of H.264?  I wouldn't want to break any laws.
Yes, you do.

>
> I believe I know the answer, based on your statement "No more or less
> … than … ffmpeg" as ffmpeg explicitly does not provide any patent
> licensing,
:)
Again, that was specifically about ffmpeg as a component of Google
Chrome, not about Google Chrome as a whole.   Licensing of projects
that use a lot of open source components with a lot of different
licenses is a complicated matter, since each component can have a
license that is separate than the license for the work as a whole.
I'm trying to make sure I am being as explicit as I can about what
each subject i am talking about is while still providing answers, so
that the answers are the actual answer, but as you can imagine, it's
tricky.  It can be hard to differentiate between the questions people
want to know an answer that is more general than what they asked, and
those where they want to know just about that specific thing.  When it
comes to matters like these, it's usually best for me to just answer
the question people actually asked explicitly, and let them ask
followups, than it is to try to anticipate what they really wanted to
know.  It can come off as dodging at times, but i'm doing the best i
can ;)

--Dan