iLBC codec legal status

Casey Dahlin cdahlin at redhat.com
Thu Aug 14 17:29:49 UTC 2008


Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Peter Lemenkov <lemenkov at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> ILBC is a low-bitrate codec used in many OSS and commerciall
>> applications. However its legal status isn't clear at least for me.
>>     
>
> [...]
>
>   
>> Is it acceptable for inclusion into Fedora?
>>     
>
> No, it is not, because it places unacceptable restrictions on commercial use.
>
> I had to strip iLBC from Asterisk tarballs for quite a while until
> Digium finally removed the code themselves.
>
> Jeff
>
>   
Is the restriction on the reference implementation or the codec itself? 
If the latter, could someone not re-implement it without looking at the 
reference implementation?

My understanding is Copyright couldn't prevent someone from 
re-implementing and using their code under whatever license. Patents, 
however, could.

I2ANAL

--CJD




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