[XviD-devel] License/legal discussions

[Jan Rychter]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Hauxwell <james at dattrax.co.uk>:
 Jim> Jan, If you are only doing playback, then get a licence from DivX
 Jim> Networks for DivX5.x.  Probably most of the specific code your
 Jim> company has written from scratch, and would not have been subject
 Jim> to GPL if it was in another decoder.  This could be slotted into
 Jim> the DivX decoder SDK with little effort (iDCTs / motion comp).  I
 Jim> must be clear that this doesn't mean in any way ripping off any
 Jim> part of the Xvid code.  You could have a very performant decoder
 Jim> in a quick time and resolve the licensing issue.  I wouldn't say
 Jim> DivX encoder is better than Xvid, as its not, however the decoder
 Jim> should be OK.

 Jim> Just a Thought

Thanks -- but how does that help the XviD project?

As I mentioned at the beginning, it's not like we *have* to use XviD,
and it's not like we're trying desperately to make money off it. We'd
like to work with the project and open-source our work, so that people
can hack on the hardware architecture we'll be announcing soon. Yes,
we'd also like to include MPEG-4 SP/ASP in our Video-on-Demand systems,
but there are other ways to do that.

As to other discussions in this thread: I don't want to respond to every
posting. I have seen some statements with regard to the GPL, MPEG-LA and
licensing that are incorrect -- but the point is not to discuss those to
death. I think we can all agree that the current way of licensing XviD
causes at least a lot of confusion and disagreement on what exactly can
be done with the code.

Perhaps it is possible to change the license or dual-license XviD, then?

best regards,
--Jan
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