Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] Gnomemeeting's future

[Craig Southeren <craigs postincrement com>]

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 22:43:50 +0100
Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com> wrote:

..deleted

> > H.264 should be possible. From the MPEG LA Licensing Terms:
> > "Royalties to be paid by end product manufacturers for an encoder, a decoder 
> > or both (â??unitâ??) begin at US $0.20 per unit after the first 100,000 units 
> > each year.  There are no royalties on the first 100,000 units each year.  
> > Above 5 million units per year, the royalty is US $0.10 per unit."
> > 
> > If we go beyond the 100.000 unit limit, I think we have different things to 
> > worry about :-)
> > 
> > For more info, see http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html
> > 
> > A GPLed encoder is available here:
> > http://www.videolan.org/x264.html
> > 
> > FFMPEG can dedode h.264.
> > 
> > So the only thing we really lack is time.
> 
> And how would we pay the licences fees?

That's the easy part.

The hard part is that you have put a user registration system in place
so that your "sales" can be audited. This is required in order to prove
that you have shipped less than, or more than, the 50,000 limit. And you
can't just use a simple email sign-up either - you have to use some sort
of node-locked system to meet the license requirements.

For example, Digium sells a G.729 codec license for Asterisk that is
locked into the MAC address of the network cards. If you change your
network cards, you need a new license, and they will only let you do
that ONCE before you have to buy a new one.

   Craig

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 Craig Southeren      craigs postincrement com / craigs voxgratia org

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