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Toot

Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 08:46

So here's a question: OpenEXR. There's "open" in the name! But, it contains DWAA/DWAB compression modes. Which, supposedly, are patented. OpenEXR license just says "BSD" but if you look at "PATENTS" file in the repo, it says that Dreamworks allows you to use/modify/distribution "implementation of DreamWorks Lossy Compression within the OpenEXR standard".

Now... what does that mean? Can a different EXR decoding library implement DWA decompression?

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Descendants

Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 08:48

...my interest is e.g. tinyexr -- it is another implementation of EXR decoding. But so far it has not implemented DWA out of patent bogeyman.

If, hypothetically, someone implements that, does that still fall under "within the OpenEXR standard"?

What is "open" about OpenEXR if parts of it can not be implemented by 3rd parties?

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Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 08:51

...ffmpeg has implemented DWA decoder on their own, btw (in 2021, for ffmpeg 4.4). But then ffmpeg bases itself more on EU laws.

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Written by Scott Wilson on 2025-01-13 at 08:56

@aras I'd recommend talking with the OpenEXR team about this. you should be able to message them on Slack here: https://slack.aswf.io/ (join the OpenEXR room)

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Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 09:06

@propersquid I tried joining that Slack, but only people from like 7 approved companies can :(

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Written by Scott Wilson on 2025-01-13 at 09:08

@aras odd. I'm on the Slack, and that was before I was employed by any of the approved companies. Let me ask around for you.

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Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 09:12

@propersquid oh wow, just tried now, and it works! it did not work a week ago, maybe something was temporarily mis-configured

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Written by Scott Wilson on 2025-01-13 at 09:12

@aras excellent! See you there!

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Written by Scott Wilson on 2025-01-13 at 09:11

@aras message sent. Hopefully have an answer by tomorrow.

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Written by Matthäus "Anteru" Chajdas on 2025-01-13 at 11:35

@aras A standard needs a standard body, if it's ISO or whatever, then you can have fair and reasonable license grants, and/or provide the patents needed to implement. The problem is we have a "standard" here without a standard body and no specification that allows independent implementations.

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Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 11:48

@anteru right, I was hoping for a "yes you can" or "no you can't" answer, but yours is like "life sucks!" one :/

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Written by Matthäus "Anteru" Chajdas on 2025-01-13 at 12:08

@aras My answer is that you need a lawyer or a standard body. Maybe the FSF can help here and provide guidelines/legal advice for this? It's not like OpenEXR is the only project affected, and long-term it's bad for everyone if patents prevent us from opening a file created 20 years ago. The legal language used "This grant does not include use of DreamWorks Lossy

Compression outside of the OpenEXR standard." implies that this is a good-faith grant for any OpenEXR implementation, so ... good luck?

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Written by Daniel Gibson on 2025-01-13 at 17:12

@anteru @aras

patents prevent us from opening a file created 20 years ago

Well, after 20 years the patent should be expired ;)

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Written by Michael B. Johnson on 2025-01-13 at 19:38

@aras I would go over to an ASWF Open EXR TSC meeting and ask:

https://www.aswf.io/meeting-calendar/

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Written by Aras Pranckevičius on 2025-01-13 at 19:45

@Drwave I'm doing similar, but on the ASWF slack

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Written by Michael B. Johnson on 2025-01-14 at 04:15

@aras even more expedient!

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Written by slembcke on 2025-01-13 at 15:41

@aras Hrm, I mean OpenGL and h.264 are open standards, but not open source. I suppose they probably mean it more like that. You are allowed to know how it works, but it’s not necessarily free in any sense of the word.

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