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

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Silvia Pfeiffer
<silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Daniel Berlin <dannyb at google.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 8:20 PM, Chris DiBona <cdibona at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Looping in Danny (in transit)
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 1:38 AM, Geoffrey Sneddon
>>> <foolistbar at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2 Jun 2009, at 02:58, Chris DiBona wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> One participant quoted one of the examples from the LGPL 2.1, which
>>>>> says "For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free
>>>>> redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly
>>>>> or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it
>>>>> and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the
>>>>> Library."
>>>>
>>>> I'm still unclear as to how this does not apply to Chrome's case. If I get a
>>>> copy of Chrome, you are bound (by the LGPL) to provide me with a copy of the
>>>> source ffmpeg, and I must be able to redistribute that in either binary or
>>>> source form.
>> Which you can.
>>
>>> ?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
>> not restrict any of your rights under the LGPL 2.1, is the important
>> part.
>
> Let me ask for more clarification here, since you seem to have a
> really good understanding of the legal implications.
>
> It seems to me that if I have decided for whatever reason (probably
> because I did not want to use a library that is likely to infringe on
> patents) that I did not want to have ffmpeg installed on my computer,
> and I installed Chrome, that in this case I would get a library
> installed on my computer without being aware of it. Or turned the
> other way - if I knew that Chrome comes with ffmpeg and I really
> didn't want ffmpeg installed on my computer, I could not use Chrome.
> Is this correct?
No, it isn't.
I'm told if you remove the ffmpeg dll, Chrome should still function
properly, it should just not recognize <video> as a valid tag.

Received on Tuesday, 2 June 2009 19:06:57 UTC