Cisco plans to open-source H.264 code, widen support for web-based video chat

[Sebastian Dröge]

On Fr, 2013-11-01 at 08:06 +0100, elio francesconi wrote:
> Dear all,
> I want to share with you this important news to know your opinion.
> Reading briefly this article it seems that Cisco, the codec's owner don't
> want royalties anymore.
> What does it means, pratically?

In practise that means that if you download the binary from Cisco and
use that for h264, you'll have a h264 license.

If you build from their sources (with or without modifications) your
binary won't be covered, if you do h264 with another implementation
(e.g. libav or x264) this won't be covered either. Also it's unclear if
the binary can be redistributed and if usage of it conflicts with e.g.
the GPL, and e.g. Debian can't ship it. So overall the usefulness seems
rather limited to me, especially this doesn't make the situation better
for open source projects in general and doesn't make the codec a free
(as in freedom) codec.

-- 
Sebastian Dröge <sebastian at centricular.com>
Centricular Ltd - http://www.centricular.com
Expertise, Straight from the Source
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