Mesa Can Now Be Built With Select Video Codecs Disabled For Software Patent Concerns

[oiaohm]

Rough, and user unfriendly. But necessary if you make devices which do have SoC chips and do not require the codecs.

This is a true case.

But if I understand this correctly, it's a concern with hw licensing? So the codecs can be legally shipped, but the entity using them requires a license?

Its worse. Who requires license is not just it there is more than 1 patent license. Those making the SoC/silicon only have to license the bits to make the hardware at the bare min don't have to license the patents to allow user to use the feature because they are not making a full device. Then the ODM yes the party that puts silicon chips on boards can choose to license the patents from a pool for a give time frame like 5 years. There is no requirement to tell end user that the hardware was only patent licensed for 5 years. Now you as a end user could find yourself in location if you get audited that you were using something where the ODM had not paid the license and you were not aware that you had to pay the license. Now depending on your countries laws depends on if you are screwed or not.

[billyswong]

Yes this is the horrible reality its not like how you would expect. https://codecs.raspberrypi.com/license-keys/ You see it here with raspberrypi and it hardware lock. The reality here is those enforcing patents don't mandate hardware lock.

https://www.mpegla.com/programs/mpeg-2-systems/license-agreement/

Like the mpeg-2 here the license has to be paid every 5 years for all made devices. Welcome to horrible so you want to use a GPU past when the vendor of that GPU wants you to this now creates a problem of using a no longer patent licensed device.

Really it something we don't get told that we should when we by hardware as in how many years are the patent effected features in fact paid up for. Yes I really do wish regulators would step in and say for hardware that patent licenses has to be for life of hardware not X number of years as it is now.

That's a crazy legal trap! There ought to be a legislation fix, such that only the hardware vendors or software developers are liable to patent lawsuit, and anyone who download packages or purchase devices shall be free from the threat of patent troll. A promise that any lawsuits targeted to users shall be immediately dismissed.

[caligula]

Does this affect x86 desktop in any way?

[airlied]

While *some* hardware manufacturers include the license for use with the hardware (most GPU vendors), not all do (especially SoC vendors), requiring the integrator/manufacturer to arrange the license if they so wish. While not quite the same, the RPi MPEG2 decoder was an example of a codec implemented at the chip level, but the RPi foundation did not license it for all shipments, letting individuals choose to pay to play (the video). As more embedded solutions uses a locked and signed bootloader and OS, locking out the use a particular hardware capability in software only for their offering can save them money because they can show they are not using, cannot use, the hardware capability.

Why do you think most GPU vendors provide it? I've very little evidence to show that.

https://jina-liu.medium.com/settle-your-questions-about-h-264-license-cost-once-and-for-all-hopefully-a058c2149256

as linked in the commit explains a lot of it.

Like it might be that you buy an MSI branded NVIDIA GPU and MSI pay it, or a Lenovo laptop with an Intel GPU and Lenovo pays it, or maybe Microsoft pays it, or maybe they don't the thing is it's definitely not obvious. It's deliberately very obscure to maximise targets. I'd prefer distros made that choice for themselves after consulting their own legal representatives rather than Mesa making a choice for them that puts them in the line of fire.

Like a distro that was shipping this before can just add "-Dvideo-codecs=h264dec,h264enc,h265dec,h265enc,vc1dec" to their build and be back where they were in no time.

[Adarion]

I can't wait to have to grab mesa from some semi-official affiliated distro repo to get working hardware decode. And the inevitable issues when said semi-official affiliated repo gets out of sync with package updates in the official repos. This is already annoying enough with libs or out of tree drivers in RPM Fusion or Packman.

Exactly that. It won't happen for Gentoo, but I can see all the SuSEs, RedHat derivatives and maybe Deb* derived ones, that one has to add 3rd party repos, maybe even obscure ones, to get things running. I mean, this is like Windows 98 when we had install weird codec packs from obscure websites and one had to be worried about dialers (56K anyone?), viruses or other malware. Here it might be obscure or simply run out of sync or end up unmaintained and then you get messy dependencies.

[carewolf]

Why do you think most GPU vendors provide it? I've very little evidence to show that.

https://jina-liu.medium.com/settle-your-questions-about-h-264-license-cost-once-and-for-all-hopefully-a058c2149256

as linked in the commit explains a lot of it.

Like it might be that you buy an MSI branded NVIDIA GPU and MSI pay it, or a Lenovo laptop with an Intel GPU and Lenovo pays it, or maybe Microsoft pays it, or maybe they don't the thing is it's definitely not obvious. It's deliberately very obscure to maximise targets. I'd prefer distros made that choice for themselves after consulting their own legal representatives rather than Mesa making a choice for them that puts them in the line of fire.

Like a distro that was shipping this before can just add "-Dvideo-codecs=h264dec,h264enc,h265dec,h265enc,vc1dec" to their build and be back where they were in no time.

Open source products don't necessarily need to pay for the license. The license is only for pre-compiled binaries and hardware, not for sources. This means if you compile part of the decoder on the users machine, it is free.

[Quackdoc]

Open source products don't necessarily need to pay for the license. The license is only for pre-compiled binaries and hardware, not for sources. This means if you compile part of the decoder on the users machine, it is free.

for some reason, I don't see distros doing this that will ending well

[carewolf]

for some reason, I don't see distros doing this that will ending well

Some already do, others use the cisco binary work around.

[Quackdoc]

Some already do, others use the cisco binary work around.

im not familiar with the work around, any enlightenment? but I am familiar with compiling mesa don't get me wrong, (testing rusticl, thank you aur). but it's not always the greatest experience on some setups for sure. (building mesa on a cellphone in a proot env is not fun lul)

[carewolf]

im not familiar with the work around, any enlightenment? but I am familiar with compiling mesa don't get me wrong, (testing rusticl, thank you aur). but it's not always the greatest experience on some setups for sure. (building mesa on a cellphone in a proot env is not fun lul)

It is a precompiled version of openh264 offered by Cisco where they have already paid the license once. See https://brendaneich.com/2013/10/ciscos-h-264-good-news/