Re: [Linphone-users] Re: FTBFS of linphone 3.1.2 on Fedora 11

[Matěj Cepl]

Dne 28.8.2009 11:04, Simon Morlat napsal(a):
> > 2) The second one is much more problematic I am afraid. So far Fedora
> > package has video disabled, and I would like to make it enabled (there
> > is so much talk about video communication, that it could greatly help in
> > linphone's popularity; I know that it is still rather basic, but I think
> > competition is not much better, so it should be worthy).
> > Unfortunately, linphone seems to depends in compile time on ffmpeg,
> > which is absolutely no go in the official Fedora repository. I can see
> > four possible solutions for this:
> >      
> I'm suprised with that.
> Why ffmpeg is "no go" ? If you disable H264,WM*,H263 and mpeg4 codecs, there is
> as far as I know no problem with redistribution of ffmpeg with respect of
> patents and GPL. Maybe I missed something ?
>    
Well, I am not a ffmpeg maintainer, but just that the reality with 
Fedora is that we don't have ffmpeg in the official Fedora repos. Maybe 
it is the preference for GStreamer, I really don't know. I can only say, 
that I don't feel like maintaining ffmpeg-patent-free package. And from 
looking at the dependencies, it seems to me that there are just few 
packages which would have make sense to be in Fedora proper with 
ffmpeg-free. But, as I have said, I am not a maintainer, so I would just 
keep it as very very last resort.
> Well I do not think gstreamer solved anything. If I understand we simply count
> on the end user to infringe the patents and corrupt the GPL... Or let the end
> user buy decoders from fluendo (unfortunately fluendo has no encoders, so it
> won't help linphone).
>    
Cannot it work directly with libtheora? Sorry, just random question.

And concerning "infringing the patents" ... I am a Czech so I have no 
legal problem to use ffmpeg for my private use. The problem I have is 
caused by my employer being from that crazy country where they recognize 
software patents ;-).
> I think Fedora,debian and others should do legal things as much as possible,
> and thus there are no plenty of solutions: use patent free codecs: theora,
> snow, schrodinger, vorbis, speex...
>    
Unfortunately, xiph doesn't seem to be on RH IRC @ the moment (and it is 
absolutely awesome what he does with Thnuselda ... 
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo{,1-8}.html), so I have to 
ask you ... did anybody made any testing/comparison of free codecs for 
VoIP comparing them to the proprietary ones specifically for VoIP use? I 
mean, I guess, there are different requirements on video codecs for VoIP 
and video codecs for compressing movie clips (speed & compression × 
quality of the image), aren't they?
> But there are plenty of 100% legal things and very important features (such as
> libswscale api) in ffmpeg, not to distribute it would be a disaster for the
> performance of video applications.
>    
I understand.
> I'm unrelated within gmane.comp.voip.linphone.user (don't even know 
> what it
> is), you can simply use the mailing list see below:
> http://www.linphone.org/index.php/eng/contacts
>    
gmane.org is a bidirectional news2email gateway with archiving. Some of 
us prefer to use news clients for reading tons of email lists we read :).

> This is a very interesting debate. I think a solution would be that ffmpeg
> decide to change their license to something more compatible with patents
> (Apache ?)
>    
As a *former* lawyer, let me emphasize that there is absolutely nothing 
license can do to change the situation around patents. It has absolutely 
nothing to do with licenses. So, no, I am afraid, changing to any other 
license cannot help.
> It would be less open-source, but it would allow this great project to be used
> in real world and to survive. I would like the FSF to tell his position on
> this topic.
>    

> PS: if you want to chat with me for faster exchanges, use gtalk
> (address@hidden) or msn (address@hidden)
>    
This time it is me, who is more extremist with free software ... I don't 
use MSN/AIM and ICQ only through XMPP gateway ;-). I will try to contact 
you.

BTW, I am going to send you in another email my bug report on linphone 
... it doesn't work well with VPN.

Matěj

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