Re: [Linphone-developers] linphone-desktop package and OpenH264 codec

[Greg Troxel]

Bernhard Schmidt <berni@debian.org> writes:

From looking at the OpenH264 site, I have to agree that ftpmasters made
the right call.

> - have linphone-desktop download the Cisco OpenH264 codec itself

I'm not 100% sure I understand, but:

Is that really  an ok thing to do, for a program in main?  That seems
like downloading non-Free code on the fly, which not only raises DFSG
issues, but also 1) how the download is checked (signature/hash)? and 2)
portability issues.

> The last option would be the preferred one. When I enable the slider in
> the GUI it asks me to download the codec. The progress bar appears, a
> success message appears, but the slider stays disabled.

It seems like if the plan is to use that, then the cisco openh264 code
should be in non-free as a packaged binary, and linphone depending on
it, and demoted to contrib from main.

Alternatively, some plugin arch for libphone, so that linphone proper is
Free and there is a non-free plugin that depeonds on linphone, not the
other way around.

There is also the issue of distributing a derived work under GPLv3 for which one
needs a patent license.  I have grown fuzzy on the details, but my
memory is that one simply can't distirbute such a work in any country
where the patent applies.

IANAL, TINLA!

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