Today the last patent for MPEG 4 Part 2 Visual finally expired.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F

#NoSoftwarePatents #OpenCodecs #MPEG4

@jwildeboer Quick question: if there are better codecs, is it good for existing media? So people can use FOSS codecs without any worries, right?

@jwildeboer This doesn't affect Arch Linux as it already ships the full MPEG-4, but this is great news for most users, esp Fedora and Debian users will benefit from this.

@qgustavor @jwildeboer iirc MPEG-4 Visual is a bit funky with browsers; last I checked neither Chromium nor Firefox will decode it but Safari does on *every* macOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS version.

Thus I've occasionally suggested it as the last-ditch fallback for "old Apple devices" that don't grok VP8/VP9/Vorbis/Opus (Wikimedia currently uses MJPEG with MP3 in a QuickTime container for this, and it looks awful but is universal across all old OS versions, not just ones that handled the old Wasm shim)

@jwildeboer I would welcome correction by those more knowledgeable, but for the benefit of people like me who were wondering, it looks like this just covers MPEG-4 part 2, i.e. the video codec that is roughly equivalent to H.263 and was used by things like DivX, not the more prevalent H.264 (which I believe is MPEG-4 part 10).

@jwildeboer maybe we'll finally get some pornography on the Internet.

@jwildeboer !!

Unfortunately not H.264 though... I'm really waiting for that.

@PizzaDemon @jwildeboer That's fucking hilarious and you should be proud

@IceWolf @jwildeboer https://www.openh264.org is maybe good enough meanwhile?

@draeath @jwildeboer Oh we've already got working H.264. It's just sucky that it's ILLEGAL™ to use it.

(okay, it might actually not be, I think we've heard of some kind of "free for small use" thing, but that could change at the whim of the patent people and they're uh. not the greatest people in the world)

@internic Yep. As explained on the post I linked to. But I have edited my post to make it clearer.

@bvibber I think the bigger point for this is that archiving existing media in MPEG4 part 2 visual and making them freely available is now possible without worrying about patent licenses. And who knows, maybe we will see better support on both decoding and encoding for this format too :) @qgustavor

@jwildeboer @bvibber @qgustavor this is Xvid, not H.264 which approx *everything* produces

@davidgerard I have updated my reply to make it more precise, even though I already did that in my original post. @bvibber @qgustavor

@internic @jwildeboer yes, you're correct, this is part 2/DivX/XviD.
The patents for AVC are all finally EOL next year I believe?

@astraleureka The last one (also a Brazilian patent) will expire 2030. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F@internic@mathstodon.xyz

@scottytrees @jwildeboer
Debian had mpeg-4 visual codecs built-in from day zero!

@jwildeboer @bvibber @qgustavor this is better than bad, but how much of that is there out in the wild?

@davidgerard @jwildeboer @qgustavor tbh i'd *love* to do a bulk pass over stuff that's been imported as .ogv or .webm from open-content sources (like open science papers) that we can replace with original copies in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 Part 2 Visual (once support is added)

That might not be a ton of individual files, but reducing generational loss in open data archives is a worthy goal.

@bvibber @jwildeboer @qgustavor big time!

@IceWolf @draeath @jwildeboer depending on where you are, H.264 patents have already expired. we're just waiting for the ones in Brazil, Malaysia, and the United States

@jwildeboer Progress. Finally.

@noisytoot @draeath @jwildeboer Oh yeah, we're in the US unfortunately. :<

See followup at https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/116953051402884293 for some weirder fantasies on what we could do with this :)

@internic @jwildeboer I use H.265 whenever possible nowadays.

@IceWolf @noisytoot @jwildeboer pretty sure openh264 is ok to use - the license is paid by Cisco without their wanting to be paid back for it. It's not a cleanroom reimplemention or such, but is actually licensed. Hell, RedHat redistributes it as a part of RHEL.

But if you're really concerned and need the codec, maybe have a lawyer check it over.

@draeath @noisytoot @jwildeboer Isn't openh264 basically just a browser thing? I assume our, say, OBS video encoding (x264 I think?) is using some actual normal open source thing, that isn't Officially Licensed?

@draeath @noisytoot @jwildeboer And like, it's not that we're gonna get sued. It's that we theoretically could and it feels bad / also the headaches it might cause for the linux distro people.

@jwildeboer Looks like AAC doesn't expire until 2031. They're already on MPEG5?