On 08/04/2017 08:18 PM, J.B. Nicholson wrote: > Thomas Daede wrote: >> (plus, as you may have guessed by now, I'm really not a huge fan of a >> GNU project endorsing or supporting proprietary codecs) > > Are the codecs you identified (H.264, H.263, and MPEG-4 ASP) proprietary > or patent-encumbered?
They are patent-encumbered. The licenses the patents are available under make them proprietary (though some people don't take patents into account for this determination). The implementation is LGPLv2.1+. > Patent-encumbered software doesn't necessarily restrict all users the > same way. Patent-encumbered codecs can be implemented as free software > because not all users are under the same patent regime; a program that > is patent-encumbered can prevent some users from using the program in > freedom but not other users. Users in at least the US, EU, and most of Asia are encumbered, which likely makes up the majority.
