Re: [Linphone-developers] G729 support in mediastremer2

[Mike Frysinger]

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 19:21, kl wrote:
>> The linphone version in question contains proprietary
>> header files to get
>> symbols of the binary plugin. Thus the linphone version
>> violates GPL. (As far
>> as I can understand from this discussion. I haven't see the
>> proposed linphone
>> modifications providing compatibility to the codec.)
>
> Maybe there is a misunderstanding of linphone plugin ?
>
> Take linphone iLBC plugin for example. Linphone iLBC plugin works without 
> needing any modification to the original Linphone source. I don't see 
> anything proprietary here. Using the similar mechanism, there are many other 
> plugins could be written, including the G729 codec. As a matter of fact, Any 
> compile binaries ( DLLs or shared libraries ) exposing the same functions 
> will be usable by Linphone.

the problem is with patents.  G729 has patents and anyone wishing to
deploy with it need to pay licensing fees.  this violates the GPL
redistribution aspects.

mediastreamer's architecture does not support plugins and all the
interfaces need to be compiled in.  so it's debatable (but i dont care
to) as to whether writing the mediastreamer G729 portion to dlopen an
external G729 library would also violate the GPL.  i would suspect
that it does.
-mike