openSUSE Making It Easier To Install H.264 Codec Support

[Quackdoc]

But these repos already exist. In any case it would be easy to outsource it to the OpenSUSE community who is not a corporate entity

even if SUSE outsourced it, it wouldn't matter, it needs to be distributed by THE people with the rights to distribute, and again, there may be some liability still by enabling those repos by default, unless the later concern is addressed it wouldn't matter who ships it.

[cooperate]

This is so ridiculous. Especially disabling hardware decoding which I paid for and developer of this hardware paid all licensing fees for me. Why I can't use hardware one, where it is as simple as sending a frame and receiving array of pixels without any intermediate patented software implementation.

Because it doesn't work that way.

[Estranged1906]

its then up to those third parties to package for them, which is not great, there also may be a degree of liability still to be had, its important to note, you can still add non-free repos and get these codecs on fedora

But these repos already exist. In any case it would be easy to outsource it to the OpenSUSE community who is not a corporate entity

[Quackdoc]

If they're so afraid of getting sued (wonder why Canonical isn't though!) they should just add a button in Yast that says "install all codecs and hw acceleration bits from third-party repos" which then pulls it from Packman or Cisco or whatever.

its then up to those third parties to package for them, which is not great, there also may be a degree of liability still to be had, its important to note, you can still add non-free repos and get these codecs on fedora

[Estranged1906]

If they're so afraid of getting sued (wonder why Canonical isn't though!) they should just add a button in Yast that says "install all codecs and hw acceleration bits from third-party repos" which then pulls it from Packman or Cisco or whatever.

[King InuYasha]

OpenH264 is mostly used for decoding. x264 is an encoder. While OpenH264 can encode, no one uses that functionality.

Not true. OpenH264 is exclusively used by multiple programs for real-time H.264 encoding. It's the only H.264 encoder supported by the WebRTC library used in Chromium/Electron, for example. OpenH264 was designed for performance in real-time encoding, whereas x264 is designed for traditional multi-pass AOT encoding. It's a good encoder, mind you, but it does have trade-offs of its own.

[King InuYasha]

Yes. And I don't know, why the codec isn't preinstalled.

At https://www.openh264.org/ stands


So the costs for patents and licenses pays Cisco.
There is no reason to not integrating it in openSUSE.

The codec isn't preinstalled because the fees are only paid for Cisco distributing to users. If openSUSE (or Fedora, who has a similar arrangement) distributes it, then it's void and the fees need to be paid for each user all over again (which means we need a way to count people using it, which nobody has). That's why the repo and why it's not preinstalled.

[qarium]

wait a minute the patent of h264 expires in 2023 so why cisco continue pay patent fees ?

for example the patent (6,959,046 expired on 2022-12-08)

"H.264 is a newer video codec. The standard first came out in 2003, but continues to evolve. An automatically generated patent expiration list is available at H.264 Patent List based on the MPEG-LA patent list. The last expiration is US 7826532 on 29 nov 2027 ( note that 7835443 is divisional, but the automated program missed that). US 7826532 was first filed in 05 sep 2003 and has an impressive 1546 day extension. It will be a while before H.264 is patent free."

https://www.osnews.com/story/24954/us-patent-expiration-for-mp3-mpeg-2-h264/

the first version of h264 is patent free in 2023 and we already have 2023 the last version will be patent free in 2027...

don't know what version the base profile of the webbrowser used 264 is using.

in my point of view no one should pay MPEG LA any cent they are a evil entity:

https://wiki.endsoftwarepatents.org/wiki/MPEG_LA

[Quackdoc]

Then how do Canonical ship these? Do they pay H.264/HEVC royalties?

I dont know what canonical does, they might pay them, I doubt it, they might not ship them, they might decided that the benefits outweigh the risk, hard for me to say since I dont even know what canonical does.

[xorbe]

Too much time talking about backend infrastructure, and didn't tell me where to click to make it all happen. I assume the Packman repo already has me covered here.