AAC and Debian(tookmund.com) |
AAC and Debian(tookmund.com) |
"This is a slightly unusual situation, as the fdk-aac library is licensed under what even the GNU project acknowledges is a free software license. However, this license explicitly does not grant any patent rights."
"Any language used by the owner of the patent, or any conduct on his part exhibited to another from which that other may properly infer that the owner consents to his use of the patent in making or using it, or selling it, upon which the other acts, constitutes a license and a defense to an action for a tort."
However, here, the facts are not as stated in the article. The FDK license does not just "explicitly not grant", as the article notes, it puts you on notice that you must obtain a patent license. That is not like the MIT license. The MIT license is silent re: a patent license.
The point remains, if you license your software permissively (MIT), and you were aware of it being patent encumbered, and someone uses your software in a patent infringing way, the problem would likely be licensor's, not yours.
Here, you may be correct, that is less certain because the license explicitly mentions needing to obtain a patent license.
But the key thing is that Debian tends to lag on user amenites (hardware, drivers, codecs, etc.) to a point where one wonders if they actually use the distro on modern hardware...
This could be advertised better.
Isn't SBC support mandatory for Bluetooth audio devices?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBC_%28codec%29
As of A2DP version 1.3, the Low Complexity Subband Coding remains the default codec and its implementation is mandatory for devices supporting that profile, but vendors are free to add their own codecs to match their needs.
However, without that flag, FFmpeg still has (their own? VideoLAN’s?) an AAC en/decoder that works fine.
Or perhaps pipewire could ldopen() libfaac as required.
Edit: the issue is social, not technical—it’s not desirable to have an easy way to “slot in” a nonfree aac because of patent disputes
> By your broken rationale, if someone uses my free "AshamedSSL" library in a enterprisey security product and _their_ customers are hacked to no end, I'm liable. Citation needed.
I'm not sure how this follows. How did they use your software? If licensed re: the MIT, you disclaimed liability already?
What if your argument was closer to the facts: You license your software as MIT, you are aware of patent claims but are simply silent on the matter, and a user uses the software and is sued for patent infringement. If I were the licensee's attorney, I'd join you in the lawsuit arguing the good faith licensee relied on your apparent authority to convey the patent rights, and you induced my client to commit infringement by not disclosing patent claims which you were aware of.
But anyway even with your constrained example this is not yet enough to claim inducement to commit infringement. You still need _intent_. None of the jurisprudence you quoted refers to a case where licensee != patent holder, much less one where licensee would not stand to benefit from your infringement, so I'm not even sure how are you going to build a case.
You would be opening yet another Pandora's Box since so far no one in the free software community would consider free/gratis redistribution of software-that-we-know-could-potentially-be-infringing (i.e. everything) as "induction to commit infringement". (Note that _selling_ such software has always been another story, with contributory infringement at least being on the table, and the reason RedHat, etc. have traditionally been so afraid of patents).
My goodness, and circumstantial evidence can establish intent. Knowledge plus actions in promoting an infringing product (like publishing MIT licensed source code without a notice) could be enough to establish intent. See, for example, DSU Medical Corp. v. JMS Co., 471 F.3d 1293 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
> You would be opening yet another Pandora's Box
I'm not saying everything is potentially infringing. I'm saying with knowledge and actions which induce, yes, it possibly is. Most FOSS would lack actual knowledge.
This is all hypothetical anyway. Franhoufer does in fact license their software without a patent grant which puts us all on notice that we need to obtain a patent license.