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Thoreandan on March 17, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: H.264 is Magic (2016)

You could write a complete from-scratch decoder, and be sued if you distribute it.

This is the case with MPEG-2 formats used in DVD Video, and the reason that the VLC Media Player exists as a French student research project distributed as source code instead of a normal library.

Related: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html

PoignardAzur on March 17, 2022 | [–]

I'm... not sure what you mean about VLC? It started out as a student project, but now VideoLabs is a for-profit company, and there is a libVLC.

duskwuff on March 18, 2022 | [–]

This was the case for MPEG-2. The last patents in the pool expired in 2018.

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