Re: Re: Open Movie Editor

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Daniel James wrote:
>
> I'm afraid I'm going to miss that meeting, which is a shame as it sounds very 
> interesting. We're working on a native 64-bit Linux desktop distribution for 
> the creative industries ( http://64studio.com/ ) and the video editing side 
> of things is far from resolved. So far we've been unable to find a free 
> software video editor that we could package and distribute so that it works 
> 'out of the box' without running into the software patents issue.

There is not really a problem with patents unless there is the desire 
to not pay licenses or if the open source uses a license which is 
incompatible with paying patent license fees.  There are open source 
implementations of many algorithms which require paying license fees.

Adding a patented algorithm to GPLed code (and then distributing 
binaries) is clearly forbidden if it prevents distribution of the 
source code.  GPLed binaries may not be distributed if a patent would 
block the distribution of source code under the GPL.

What is needed is a non-profit IP clearing house so that users of the 
software can go to one place to pay their license fees.  The patent 
license fees would be dramatically less than the cost of proprietary 
software from a vendor which has already negotiated the license fees.

There should also be an evaluation of existing open source licenses to 
see which ones are compatible with paying patent license fees.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
[email protected], http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/


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