 This video was tough to make and it's going to be long. It's going to be boring and technical But it's going to make you really understand what's going on. So I think it's worth actually Sticking to the end of it. So let's get started. This is a story about mostly a codec h.264 What's a codec? It's responsible for recording compression and distributions of videos. It's not the only one as an example It's not actually used by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram But it is used by Twitch as an example and it is relied upon when using VLC or FF MPEG Now this codec is patented. There's a patent pool called MPEG LA that has the patents What's a patent? Patent pool? It's when many companies actually get together to defend the interest of a patent and they form a cohesive group which is a patent pool. This means that if you do want to use this codec or ship it You should pay a license fee. Now this fee cannot actually be an unlimited fee That is a company like Red Hat cannot buy an unlimited fee to make all of its users use this codec But they actually have to pay for each customer that goes on and actually gets a software that includes this codec. Now who is responsible legally for this kind of things? It's usually the last person to assemble the software stack that actually allows you to use this codec So if you have a distribution that actually takes all of these components and put them together In order for you to be able to use them They are very much liable. On the other hand if the distribution Doesn't actually ship these kind of things and you are the one actually installing the packages then you should in theory pay the fee and you are liable for what you're doing Are these patents going to expire? Yes. Anytime soon? Well, it's not so clear Now MPEG LA is actually quite transparent about what they're doing But actually understanding when it's going to expire It's not so easy because there's not singly but there's not just one patent It's many but the common idea is that no, they're not going to expire anytime soon Like in the coming years, but five ten years. Who knows? Okay, so this was the intro So what has happened actually? Well, the hardware manufacturers that ship something GPU accelerated Actually only have a partial implementation of this codex was that if the implementation is only person partial That means that they're not they are not the last part in the They are not the last to actually assemble all of the software stack to use this codex And so they don't have to pay anything. So what you get from GPU manufacturers as an example with Some exceptions, I think is not the actual implementation of the codex But it's only a partial one Fedora even before all of this happened did not shape the Missing piece to all of this. So or at least they thought the missing piece That is like the remaining software that would make that partial implementation Completely working for the user now one day in April Somebody at red hat has discovered that Mesa through VA API was actually shipping enough For distro to make sure that they add a complete software stack to use this codex together with this partial Implementation by hardware manufacturers and that's an issue because technically that means that they are Putting together all of this software stack and they are liable to be sued So what did they do? Well, they just turned this part off back in April This was off for all of this time and then one day it was reverted by one person that is not the maintainer and also not the red hat person in Mesa So that was slightly weird and when it was discovered it was immediately turned it back off All of this happened between Fedora leases. So the last Fedora lease 37 is actually the first release with this made a modified version of Mesa with this component turned off So that it does not have enough software to make this to make the codex working together with the partial implementation of the Hardware manufacturers One week after it was turned off and then one week after it was turned back on and then back off Everybody notices. So let's talk what this actually means for the user What you can do to avoid this to make sure that you still preserve The ability to use FFM peg as an example As an example in my case, I use OBS studio to record videos. I do need that Well, there are two options actually red hat has a contract with Cisco and Cisco does provide a software Acceleration only version of h.264 codex. How do they do that? Well, they pay the license simply enough But it's only h.264 and it's only software Acceleration no hardware acceleration the VAV API component that was turned off is actually now shipped or will be soon shipped By RPM fusion so you can add that You can add our PM fusion and install that but how they're able to do that Well, RPM fusion is actually based in France and France for this kind of things is either Kind of a legal gray area making it difficult to sue them Or maybe in France this kind of patents don't actually apply at all However, they do apply in the rest of Europe and in the USA So even if you think that this kind of patents shouldn't exist for software, okay We can have that discussion, but that is not what we're addressing right now right now these patents do exist both us and Europe now if you do install this package Technically you assemble the software stack so you could also be sued for this but realistically enough MP MPEG LA is not interested in seeing you personally it wouldn't get really any money out of it So it's very unlikely of course things are different if you are a big company This does mean that going from one federal release to the next one You might lose something like Chrome or Firefox hardware acceleration if you do not install There's the VA API component for from our PM fusion now Let's focus a bit more on the legal side of things and try to understand whether it was actually Reasonable for Fedora to pull this off if this was actually a risk like could could they actually be sued and If so, I mean Ubuntu is doing the same. Why aren't them getting sued? Firstly try to understand that there is a hurry like this They did all of this in a hurry for a very specific reason as soon as they discovered that where they were infringing this patents they had to not act on it immediately because if you are discovered Infringing a patent and you knew about it That's willful infringement and that is two to three times more in if you actually go to court so if you get sued between discovering that this is happening and When you actually turn this off everything that you should you would have paid you paid two three times more So they had to act on it in a hurry. So how much were they going to page? Let's try to get an idea if they indeed got sued. Well, the math is based on the lost Revenue for these groups, which is not very easy to calculate especially in the open source world because in the open source world Code is available available for everyone. You don't have like a few customers that get to you and buy your product Anyone can go on Fedora's website and install Fedora and remember that there's no way for Red Hat to actually buy some Unlimited license for all of its customers or users from Red Hat I mean the cost of just doing the lawsuit like addressing it on average Googling it's roughly between two and four million dollars Which is a lot and average for how much money you end up paying is around nine million But it really depends on the situation in this case it could be significantly more because of what I said and Sometimes it's a lot more as an example Intel once lost a lawsuit regarding these kind of things and had to pay two Billion dollars, which is a lot. I don't have that money one could try to like Estimate a bit this you can consider like you can count the amount of red Hat and Fedora instances Then it's something like five dollars each for that patent And then if it's willful infringement as I said you have to multiply that by three And then you actually have to add all of the customers that you had in the past But you don't have anymore that is all the people that actually used Red Hat Fedora and now don't use it anymore like me You can easily see how that easily gets to a very high number This is actually why I've seen reports from the intern entertainment industry where companies actually ban FM tag and VLC that relies on it all together They do not want to get sued in no way Regarding this kind of things so they avoid the usage of this codex in Charlie It's easy to think that if Fedora did ship this codex out of the box Then Fedora would also be banned in this kind of companies as well You might say okay, but I don't know of any recent lawsuit regarding this But keep in mind that usually in this kind of things they end up either in like an agreement within the two parties but even if they even if not You do end up with an NDA at the end of it and non disclosure agreement So you don't quite hear about these kind of things after they happened unless it's very big players Now red hat has actually gone through this in a very similar scenario with MP3 in the 90s So they very much not want to go through that again, especially because if you do get code Messing up with patents for the second time it's much more likely for it to be willful and You might have to pay even more you might ask, okay But can they have just a server here in I don't know some legal gray area But not not quite because what's important is where you where you're based on and they cannot Move red hat to a different country really. Okay, so to finish this off the most important question Ubuntu is doing this. Why is isn't Ubuntu getting sued? And okay, there are various arguments that could be done about this Firstly, it's important to notice that I won't go into details about this But Ubuntu does not seem to occur in general about these kind of things in the past They had similar issues that were raised and they did not address them So their legal team does not seem to occur Then you should also consider that if you're suing somebody for this You do want to get a lot of money out of it again Just suing is cost both sides between two and four million dollars And Ubuntu does not currently seem to be be very profitable So one reason that Ubuntu is not getting sued could be that it doesn't seem like an appealing target You would ideally want a company That's very big and very profitable to sue that you can you're sure you can get a lot of money out from like I don't know EBM now this might come as a surprise but EBM Nowadays nowadays it seems that it's not it's actually very profitable It has lots of lots of money It has lots of money more more than me and you might know that EBM hones right out So they are responsible for this meaning that if you want to sue regarding regarding this codex It's like the choice is between suing Ubuntu have very small company with not very Profitable or suing EBM super big International lots of money not quite the same thing also Ubuntu Kind of gets this kind of things from Debian which is based on and Debian and Arch actually they are together in the same in the same software in the public interest group and suing Software in the public interest group from a PR point of view. It's kind of a nightmare So it is one more reason not to try to mess with these kind of things EBM on the other hand, it's much more easy to say MPEG LA sued EBM and people are like, okay, I don't care like I don't know no Kia suede Google. I don't care, but if Google sued Debian software in the public interest that would be a PR nightmare. So that's one more reason So this is really the reasoning EBM does seem like a much much Fensier target to sue compared to the smaller Ubuntu Which does not seem to be as profitable profitable or software in the public interest Which is harder to justify from a PR point of view However, when I talk about this kind of things to the people who took time to explain them to me They also say that usually in this kind of scenarios You start bashing the biggest actor in the scene in this case EBM And if you're successful in that you do have precedent and you start going down to get the most money out of it So you start with IBM as an example if you're successful you switch to Ubuntu and you keep going So it is rather important for all of the Linux community That this does not happen and that there is no such precedence Precedent to be set from EBM. Now the edited video is probably going to be shorter But I'm already speaking here for 21 minutes. That's a lot. So let's wrap this up Remember that I am not a lawyer. Actually, nobody in the Linux world seemed to be a lawyer nowadays Every time you read some source about this it all it always starts with I'm not a lawyer Keep in mind this which okay, but you know There are actual lawyers in the read-ahead and EBM legal groups and when those people were asked about this Their action was do not ship the codex So we are not lawyers when actual lawyers got asked. They were like, no, Fedora is right Don't do that. So there's that as well and all of that All of this all of what I said is kind of the justification on why is that so it is not Not as simple as Fedora is doing this because they're scared of something that will clearly never happen Anyway, because there is an actual chance. There is an actual reason why Fedora red hat are more likely to get sued compared to boon too and that's EBM and in general as always things are much much more complex than than they appear and Even if we end up like studying this more in depth and we end up concluding that indeed There's no way that Fedora red hat actually gets sued keep in mind that it's very hard to tell red hat Okay, just wait until we understand we sort these things up because this just wait means that at any time they could be sued for what they know and That would be bill willful and that would be two to three times as expensive So they drew the it's understandable that they wanted to shut this down as quickly as possible Now I will say that the Public Explanation they gave it was not really good. I think that should have they should have addressed this kind of things a little better but keep in mind that everybody here is slightly scared of speaking up because you know NDA is like order employed by a red hat these kind of things But yeah, they could have done a better job now. I hope this was Useful keep in mind that I'm doing all of this channel kitty development I do that as well all can these kind of things for free I am too lazy to actually put the links on the screen, but you can find me on patreon like pattern.com slash Nicola vee Libra pay if you prefer that Libra pay dot com org Lash Nicola vee people people dot me slash Nicola vee that kind of stuff you can tip me Whatever, I would be happy to receive some two dot three billion dollars as an example Intel if you're watching You already paid two billion dollars to whoever sued you you can do me as well. No