http://www.xvid.org/

"2002/08/22 - The XVID development team has made a unanimous decision to cease project development. We will return when Sigma Designs' stops infringing the copyrights of XVID authors. As some of you had already assumed, Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software includes large amounts of XVID project code. Since Sigma Designs' refuses to comply with the terms of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) and moreover claims sole ownership of the REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software, Sigma Designs' is violating the GNU General Public License and copyright law.

We have been in contact with Sigma Designs' since July and were hopeful that this matter would be settled quietly. Their refusal to cooperate has forced us to publicly request Sigma Designs' to comply with the terms of the GNU GPL, or immediately cease REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec distribution. Feel free to ask Sigma Designs' for the REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec source code, they are obliged to provide you a copy. The official press release and a line-by-line code comparison of the REALmagic and XVID binaries are available for download below.

Our decision to publicly accuse Sigma Designs' and halt XVID development was difficult to make, please respect it. We simply do not believe XVID development should continue under the current circumstances. The XVID development team would like to thank all of our visitors and supporters for all your help and encouraging comments in the past. You really made XVID development a lot of fun!

Best wishes to you all!
The XVID team
"
XViD.org Press release:
XVID TEAM REQUESTS SIGMA DESIGNS' TO HALT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

I think Sigma Designs' will get quite many "kind" regards from people soon... :mad:

:too_hot:

I just had a heart attack!

bas*ds !!! but its a threat to just any GLP'ed project

What ever happens, it surely must affect Sigma Designs' public reputation..
If they would act legally and release their source, they'd save some of it.

Theora needs developers and we needs Theora...

You missed the point. (again)

We're not talking about video codecs here. That can be discussed at Everwicked's forum. The issue is that the GPL is being blatantly violated.

It's not about taking a position about this or that video coder, it's about being against SigmaDesign's attitude.

And no, I don't need Theora (at least not in the foreseeable future), thanks.

The story's been posted on Slashdot...I can only see the Sigma server being ./-ed soon, not to mention the "graceful" emails they will start getting.

Actually, I hear many in the GNU community have been itching for a case like this to finally have GPL stand up in court, which would set a legal precedent for the future. All other similar cases in the past have always ended amicably (they were usually rarely malicious...but that does not seem the case with Sigma here)

OMG!
A few months ago I got the request from some persons at Sigma Designs if they could use FAAD2. I said that that was only possible if they paid me, so that I could offer them a different license than GPL.
They said that that was not an option for them because they just wanted to offer the source code to their customers as an AAC decoding example.

Now I start to wonder how trustworthy these people are.
How did the people from XViD discover that their code was used? Is it in that public available MPEG-4 Video decoder software? I haven't seen any AAC software from them yet. But I'm not sure if their hardware based cards use hardware audio decoding or software, I would almost assume software decoding since it supports so many formats. Does anyone here have a Sigmadesigns card that supports AAC, I'd like to have some more info on this.

This really sucks!

Menno

Check out this thread, which discusses the findings some time ago:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=28210

This is the latest thread at doom9 about the current situation going on:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=32015

This is going to be interesting..

The test that's coming is to see if the Open Source movement can muster the legal power necessary to enforce their contract. Shaking fists wont work. Already somebody observed that the way may be opened (if XviD doesn't sue) for SIGM to turn around and claim XviD stole from them!

I was gonna tell you about the nice thread we had going over at divx.com . Thread nothing! Look at the GD front page! Right at the very top taking up most if not all the browser window! http://www.divx.com

Oh and here's the link http://forums.divx.com/viewtopic.php?topic=40040&forum=5

bit off topic: since when xvid is gpl?

Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum...

I'm not talking about video codecs !!!
I haven't sayd Theora is better in quality or performances !

Right !!! So... how to solve the problem ?

Exactly what i mean. Even if they released the source code (so they don't violate the GPL), if they pay the rights to MPEG LA they can distribute XviD (binaries too !!).

OK. But I can't distribute MPEG-4 videos from my website without paying...
It can be used only for personal purposes (backup DVD ? it sounds not too legal...)

Finally the question is:
What is the sense of waste research times when there's patents that dominate all ?



@rjamorim: don't being ungry with me... i fight for freedom

Yes, their Xcard does support AAC decoding... I suggest you do take a look at their code... It might not even be theirs... :mad:

Went trhough those guys site a bit more thoroughly, and I found this:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/pdf_docs/em847Xpb.pdf
That's the chip that supposedly does the decoding on Xcard. Then somewhere in that document I found this line:
"Low Complexity AAC (decoded using software on x86 host CPU)"

Does anyone have the software that comes with this card? I would like to have a look at it.

Menno

Heh, I'll ask around.. Lets just say that I wouldn't be one bit surprised if they would use FAAD2...

[edit]Posted this to few places so far:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32073
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&p...0363#post170363
http://www.everwicked.com/forums/showthrea...d=8276#post8276
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/6516

http://www.tomservo.cc/temp/rmaacdec.dll

It's some ActiveX/DirectX filter.

Was just going to post that I already found it
It's available for download on the sigmadesign site under the drivers for the Xcard.
Thanks anyway, I'm going to check it now.

Menno

Ok, can't say anything about their aac decoder yet.
But they use the mpeg4ip mp4 file library, I think. But I guess that is allowed since it is under the MPL (Mozilla Public License). Can anyone confirm that?

Edit: The function names are very alike, but I can't yet tell for sure if it really is the mpeg4ip library.

Menno

Any results?

What files and software you are using for the comparison?

I'm sure some other people especially at doom9 would be interested to do some paraller comparison..
Of course as a developer, only you have the final saying how it is..

I'm using IDA and w32dasm at the moment. I'm trying to find the Huffman table which are quite distinct for FAAD2.

I've contacted Nic for some help.

Menno

What about the Sigma driver file and faad compile? what are you using?

Hmm, right, that's not a bad idea. I'll get the faad code from CVS that has about the same date as the compile time of the driver.
I was currently just trying to find code that didn't really change lately.

Menno