Am 21.02.2018 um 06:57 schrieb Dave Plater:

On 21/02/18 07:33, Johannes Weberhofer wrote:

...

Dear all!

I'm one of the Remmina and freerdp maintainers just working on the next version of this product. freerdp would allow us to connect to windows systems using the x264 codec which is currently not supported by openSUSE.

Enabling x264 would allow the client to use the hardware decoding and thus increase speed and save energy. Is there any plan to include the required library into openSUSE? Are there (still) licensing preventing openSUSE from doing so?

Best regards

Yes the patents for h264 a.k.a x264 are still going to be valid for a long time so you have to install from a third party repository.

Regards Dave P

I don't really undestand these legal stuff, but could https://github.com/cisco/openh264 be included? -- Johannes Weberhofer Weberhofer GmbH, Austria, Vienna -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 09:25 +0100, Johannes Weberhofer wrote:

Am 21.02.2018 um 06:57 schrieb Dave Plater:

...

On 21/02/18 07:33, Johannes Weberhofer wrote:

...

Dear all!

I'm one of the Remmina and freerdp maintainers just working on the next version of this product. freerdp would allow us to connect to windows systems using the x264 codec which is currently not supported by openSUSE.

Enabling x264 would allow the client to use the hardware decoding and thus increase speed and save energy. Is there any plan to include the required library into openSUSE? Are there (still) licensing preventing openSUSE from doing so?

Best regards

Yes the patents for h264 a.k.a x264 are still going to be valid for a long time so you have to install from a third party repository.

Regards Dave P

I don't really undestand these legal stuff, but could https://github.com/cisco/openh264 be included?

Doubtful - whereas you can easily build/distribute CODE under a free license, the usage or distribution of the binary would be bound to financial fees for the usage of patents. h.264, also known as MPEG-4 AVC, or MPEG-4 Part 10, Audio Video Coding is to a big degree licensed by the MPEG-LA, see http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/avcweb.pdf for the 'brochure'. Other patent owners, not associated to MPEG-LA, can also claim rights. Possibly also read the FAQ: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx Cheers Dominique PS: IANAL - so anything I say can be, and most likely is, wrong :)

Am 21.02.2018 um 09:44 schrieb Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar:

On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 09:38 +0100, Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar wrote:

...

I don't really undestand these legal stuff, but could https://github.com/cisco/openh264 be included?

Doubtful - whereas you can easily build/distribute CODE under a free license, the usage or distribution of the binary would be bound to financial fees for the usage of patents.

h.264, also known as MPEG-4 AVC, or MPEG-4 Part 10, Audio Video Coding is to a big degree licensed by the MPEG-LA, see http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/avcweb.pdf for the 'brochure'. Other patent owners, not associated to MPEG-LA, can also claim rights.

Possibly also read the FAQ: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx

forgot to give one more link about openh264 by Cisco: http://www.openh264.org/BINARY_LICENSE.txt

in short: a binary built by us based on their code is not covering any patent license, so openSUSE as distributor would be liable for it.

The binary provided by Cisco does cover patent license, with limitations (non-commercial) - but disallows the bundling of said binary into our product.

Cheers Dominique

That's sad. Seems there is no way to get a x264 implementation into the distribution. So we will build freerdp and remmina without x264 support. -- Johannes Weberhofer Weberhofer GmbH, Austria, Vienna -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Am 21.02.2018 um 10:36 schrieb Jan Engelhardt:

On Wednesday 2018-02-21 09:53, Johannes Weberhofer wrote:

...

That's sad. Seems there is no way to get a x264 implementation into the distribution. So we will build freerdp and remmina without x264 support.

It is of course wishful thinking, but if freerdp/remmina were to use ffmpeg or gstreamer (with the ffmpeg plugin), it would be a no-brainer distribution-wise.

Don't we have the same issues with ffmpeg? I don't think x264 support comes with openSUSE's version - it's included in packman's version only. -- Johannes Weberhofer Weberhofer GmbH, Austria, Vienna -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Am 21.02.2018 um 09:44 schrieb Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar:

On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 09:38 +0100, Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar wrote:

...

I don't really undestand these legal stuff, but could https://github.com/cisco/openh264 be included?

Doubtful - whereas you can easily build/distribute CODE under a free license, the usage or distribution of the binary would be bound to financial fees for the usage of patents.

h.264, also known as MPEG-4 AVC, or MPEG-4 Part 10, Audio Video Coding is to a big degree licensed by the MPEG-LA, see http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/avcweb.pdf for the 'brochure'. Other patent owners, not associated to MPEG-LA, can also claim rights.

Possibly also read the FAQ: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx

forgot to give one more link about openh264 by Cisco: http://www.openh264.org/BINARY_LICENSE.txt

in short: a binary built by us based on their code is not covering any patent license, so openSUSE as distributor would be liable for it.

The binary provided by Cisco does cover patent license, with limitations (non-commercial) - but disallows the bundling of said binary into our product.

Firefox - if allowed to do so - will download the openh264 codec when started and used the first time. AFAIK this download happens from a Cisco provided build which is covered by their patent grants. Independent if it can be used by remmina or not (what I cannot tell) have a look here how this is handled by Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OpenH264 Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 10:00 +0100, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:

Firefox - if allowed to do so - will download the openh264 codec when started and used the first time. AFAIK this download happens from a Cisco provided build which is covered by their patent grants.

Where can the user enable/disable this? This would be a clear requirement for the cisco binary license: 1. The Cisco-provided binary is separately downloaded to an end user’s device, and not integrated into or combined with third party software prior to being downloaded to the end user’s device; 2. The end user must have the ability to control (e.g., to enable, disable, or re-enable) the use of the Cisco-provided binary; 3. Third party software, in the location where end users can control the use of the Cisco-provided binary, must display the following text: "OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc." Cheers Dominique

On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 10:26 +0100, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:

Am 21.02.2018 um 10:18 schrieb Dominique Leuenberger / DimStar:

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On Wed, 2018-02-21 at 10:00 +0100, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:

...

Firefox - if allowed to do so - will download the openh264 codec when started and used the first time. AFAIK this download happens from a Cisco provided build which is covered by their patent grants.

Where can the user enable/disable this? This would be a clear requirement for the cisco binary license:

IIRC Firefox asks the first time when a WebRTC H.264 codec is requested by a website to download. In addition it can be enabled/disabled in the Add-Ons->Plugins settings.

Thanks for confirming - I simply did not remember any such dialog, but I guess I've been running this setup for so long, anything is possible :) - Checked in the settings, last updated on Oct 2016; so it's there indeed. Cheers Dominique

On Sat, 2018-02-24 at 22:59 +1100, Aleksa Sarai wrote:

On 2018-02-21, Johannes Weberhofer wrote:

...

I don't really undestand these legal stuff, but could https://github.com/cisco/openh264 be included?

The patent license for OpenH264 only applies to the binaries *as compiled by Cisco*. And the openSUSE policy (in general) is that we always compile our packages from the sources (there are exceptions like Maven). Though, since OpenH264 has reproducible builds we could do something like:

0. Include the binary released by Cisco into our package sources. 1. Compile OpenH264. 2. Compare the hashes of both binaries and ensure they are bit-for-bit identical. 3. Ship the *Cisco* binaries.

No, we can't, as this clearly violates the binary license, as published by CISCO: http://www.openh264.org/BINARY_LICENSE.txt Cheers Dominique

Aleksa Sarai schrieb:

3. Ship the *Cisco* binaries.

AFAIK, only Cisco can actually *ship* them (also because of how the patent license for H264 is structured). That's why Mozilla also doesn't actually ship the binaries with Firefox but downloads them directly from Cisco in the background (as that works with the licenses). That said, AFAIK Firefox only uses OpenH264 for WebRTC conversations (where parameters can be tightly controlled/negotiated) and not for normal playing of videos (where you get all kinds of coding variants you can't control) where on Linux, Firefox IIRC "just" go using ffmpeg for playing h.264/h.265 videos (while open codecs are shipped with Firerfox and decoded internally). KaiRo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org