[Bug 1742] Review Request: vo-aacenc - VisualOn AAC encoder library

[RPM Fusion Bugzilla]

http://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1742





--- Comment #11 from Prabin Kumar Datta <linux.n.pkd at gmail.com>  2011-06-09 18:38:50 ---
Hi! Kevin Kofler,
After reading your question I was confused since these are legal issues. So, I
asked Upstream about this.

Here goes the Upstream's answers of all your questions:

> /----------- (1.)
> Are we sure this package is actually legal to ship under the license it claims
> to be under?
>
> http://spectralhole.blogspot.com/2010/12/androids-stagefright-aac-encoder-or.html
>
> If the above blog post is true,

Yes, it's true, it is derived from the 3GPP reference implementation -
nobody denies that.

> this package contains non-Free code derived
> from the ISO AAC reference implementation just like FAAC does.

Except that in this case, VisualOn claims, by releasing the code under the
license they have done, that they have the right to doing it.

> /------- (2.)
> So http://www.mail-archive.com/libav-devel@libav.org/msg00895.html claims:
> > The code in these libraries are (just as for opencore-amr) relicensed
> > versions of 3GPP reference code, but all of it has, to the best of my
> > knowledge, been checked for legal correctness by Google.
>
> Now whom do we believe? Do they have the rights to relicense that 3GPP code?

You can only know that by asking 3GPP and VisualOn.

> What about the code which 3GPP allegedly derived from ISO reference code?

The same goes here, you need to ask 3GPP.

> http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=88183&pid=752806&mode=threaded&start=#entry752806
> http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=16431
>
> (Google's response there shows that Google didn't check the legal status as
> claimed by Martin Storsjö, they're deferring all queries to VisualOn.)

That's the most authoritive answer you will get, unless you ask VisualOn
yourself. I have not done any further research myself - I only
redistribute code under the license that I have got it from
Google/VisualOn. You can't really get any further by discussing this issue
back and forth between people that haven't checked the issue and that
aren't lawyers.

Either you trust that VisualOn has done things right, or you ask them to
provide the necessary documents showing that everything is right.

> /--------- (4.)
> The opencore-amr and vo-amrwbenc codecs might also be encumbered, by the way.

Yes, the same goes for them, too, except that you need to ask PacketVideo
instead of VisualOn, for opencore-amr.


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