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

[Bernhard Schmidt]

Am 27.12.20 um 01:21 schrieb Greg Troxel:

Hi Greg,

>> - 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.

I agree it makes me somewhat squirmy. I would prefer something that
could be shipped with Debian, which I think can only be msx264.

@belledonne: Is msx264 something that could be polished/still used or is
this absoletely deprecated? I guess the compiler warnings could be fixed
(one of them has been fixed in git as far as I can see), and if this is
just minor glue between mediastreamer2 and x264 it probably does not
need a lot of updates.

> 
>> 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!

Me neither :-)

But yes, thinking about it again I think the best option would be to
disable this downloading thing. If I understand
linphone-app/src/components/codecs/VideoCodecsModel.cpp correctly it is
downloading from a http-location without any verification.

Hoping for msx264...

Bernhard