[Freeswitch-users] Trouble in installation of mod_bcg729

Ken Rice krice at freeswitch.org
Wed Nov 25 17:32:12 MSK 2015


Civil or Criminal I don’t think really matters here, as the Project has made the decision to not support this particular piece of software due to legal liabilities that arise from it. And we ask that people don’t link it or ask for support of it on the mailing list.

 

 

From: freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org [mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of Michael Giagnocavo
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 2:44 AM
To: FreeSWITCH Users Help <freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org>
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Trouble in installation of mod_bcg729

 

Isn’t patent infringement not illegal, but just a civil issue (depending on jurisdiction anyways)? Not that I disagree with the FS project’s stance, given their relation with Sipro, and the little to be gained by freely helping others avoid a $10 channel fee. Probably best to avoid any appearance of not playing by their rules.

 

But the source in these mod simply links Intel’s code to FS, so by itself I highly doubt it is infringing any patents as it does nothing; the IPP code isn’t distributed. Just like FS doesn’t infringe the G.729 patents by having a linking/plugin system. Only making the complete mod including the patented parts, using it, or distribution of the full mod is likely to be infringing. Perhaps offering advice on how to do so is a bad idea, too? 

 

It’s hard to really know how it’d be handled as there doesn’t seem to be any cases to tell us. But FFmpeg (at least 2^24 times more popular than these mods) says on their site that they haven’t had problems, nor have private users. But commercial users end up getting a call from the MPEG patent folks to pay up. So that at least shows one consortium apparently OK with letting code exist and get around, but will move against anyone actually using it for realsies. Maybe someone can let us know what Sipro has done and why they haven’t killed all the sites hosting open-source G.729 modules for FS and others.

 

I’d be happy to chat off list I that’s better.

 

IANAL,

-Michael

 

 

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