[theora-dev] theora.org website proposal

[Aaron Colwell]

I am not a lawyer, but here is my understanding of how the license works.

The binary license only covers the components that don't have public 
source available. This includes the RealAudio and RealVideo codecs, RN's 
proprietary RDT and PNM transport protocols, a few pieces of the RA & RV 
renderers, and a few pieces of the .RM file format reader. The rule of 
thumb is that if it requires distribution libraries to build the component 
then it would be covered by the binary license.

I believe the binary license is just for protecting RealNetworks IP and 
third party IP that RN doesn't have license to distribute in source form. 

You can build a player that is not encumbered by this license. Perhaps we 
should create a installer that only contains code that is publically 
available. I'll make that suggestion to the player team. Vorbis, Theora, 
MP3, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, and H.263 would be the main datatypes supported 
in such a player. I'm sure there are others as well, but I can't remember 
the all off the top of my head.

Helix is sort of a strange beast because most of the code is open to the 
public, but other parts RealNetworks doesn't have the rights to 
distribute or doesn't want to distribute. Instead of just 
keeping everything private, RN decided to release most of the code to the 
public so they could benefit and extend it. Just because parts of Helix
are protected by more restrictive licenses doesn't mean that it isn't an
"open source" project.

Aaron

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Arc Riley wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 10:38:44AM -0800, Aaron Colwell wrote:
> > There is Theora support in the Helix Player for Linux. You have to build 
> > the theora plugin yourself, or I can send you one. If there is interest I 
> > could also spend some time and try to get the plugins working in Windows 
> > as well. If I do that, then you can either use the standard Real desktop 
> > players like RealOne or RealPlayer 10. If you don't want to use one of 
> > those then you can just build splay, which is a simple Helix command-line 
> > player.
> 
> Speaking of the Helix player, what's the deal with this "Binary Research 
> Use License"?  IANAL, but the RPSL seems decent enough, but this second 
> license neuters most of the rights that the first license grants, most 
> specifically, the right to redistribute the source code.  
> 
> As much as I'd like to see the player in action, I can't agree to the 
> second license.  Why is the player being advertised as being "copyleft" 
> and "open source" when it's restricted with a proprietary license?
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