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Topic: Open Source TAK encoder (Read 19153 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #25 –
Please keep in mind that:
Not everyone begging for source release is a FOSS zealot.
Availability of source code determines what software can support the codec (and I'm not even talking about GPL vs closed source issues here).
Many projects out there really can't interop with a Windows DLL decoder. Fortunately there's a TAK decoder in FFmpeg now, that's how I've been playing TAK on my Android TV.
Many projects out there really can't interop with a Windows EXE encoder. Those projects will not be able to support TAK even if the maintainer really wants to.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #26 –
I want to apologize for my use of the word "leeches". Even in my aroused state it was not my intention to call anyone a worm like beeing. The word appealed to me because i felt as if someone was sucking my blood.

Actually i did not want to reply anymore before i have a plan how i can proceed. But my inappropriate choice of words has distressed me. Again: Sorry.

Thanks for all the supportive posts and mails! Forgive me, if i can't reply yet.

I can hardly think clearly and need some distance. In due course, I will make a statement as to whether and, if so, how I can imagine continuing my work on Tak. (Partly DeepL was my friend).

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #27 –
Quote from: Peter on
Please keep in mind that:
Not everyone begging for source release is a FOSS zealot.
Availability of source code determines what software can support the codec (and I'm not even talking about GPL vs closed source issues here).
Many projects out there really can't interop with a Windows DLL decoder. Fortunately there's a TAK decoder in FFmpeg now, that's how I've been playing TAK on my Android TV.
Many projects out there really can't interop with a Windows EXE encoder. Those projects will not be able to support TAK even if the maintainer really wants to.

Just thought I'd toss in, going to a source-available model (not necessarily full-blown open source) helps ensure that, in some way shape or form, your software can outlive yourself.

It's not the only way to accomplish that by any means. You could bequeath your code to somebody in a will, or whatever. But getting the code online is a pretty easy way to go about it.

That's one pragmatic reason for it.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #28 –
@Peter: Android TV is nothing I have heard of before. Why would TAK be a part of it? But it sounds cool (no pun intended).
"Something bothering you, Mister Spock?"

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #29 –
Quote from: Destroid on
@Peter: Android TV is nothing I have heard of before.
A lot of smart TV platforms are either Android or in another way based on the Linux kernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smart_TV_platforms

You shouldn't be surprised that <format X> users might want to play their files on whatever devices they use to play audio/video ...?

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #30 –
Quote from: Destroid on
@Peter: Android TV is nothing I have heard of before. Why would TAK be a part of it? But it sounds cool (no pun intended).
It's just an example of real life TAK use (play lossless audio on living room TV). TAK isn't a part of the Android operating system, but any player software based on FFmpeg can play TAK on it, there's quite a few of them.
This would not be possible without public source code. I don't think there's even a sensible option of supporting such without source code release? Maintaining Android binary dynamic libraries for all CPU architectures sounds tedious.
Repeat above for: Linux, all Apple systems, etc.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #31 –
Quote from: sld on
A little more empathy would go a long way

Empathy is always in order, however...

Quote from: sld on
... in understanding that it is right not to wrest away a person's sense of perceived control/ownership/possession regarding private property.

Nobody other than the owner is responsible for their feelings, their reaction to, a benign act.

Quote from: sld on
I am no expert in the laws and principles of code, but am familiar with basic human decency and the necessity of cordial private communication, seeking the man's blessing/permission, making sure to give proper and visible credit than to rob it off him etc.

Unless you are alleging literal theft, then there is no room to call the work of writing benign software "indecent" or "[not] cordial".  If anything the sour grapes reaction was the response lacking decency or civility.
Creature of habit.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #32 –
Quote from: Soap on
Unless you are alleging literal theft, then there is no room to call the work of writing benign software "indecent" or "[not] cordial".
Do you reject the concept of intellectual property? If somebody releases software for free but doesn't share the source code, he has a right to do that, and if somebody else reverse engineers that software against the author's wishes, that's hardly a benign act, unless you assert that the author had no right to withhold the source code in the first place, which would require you to reject the author's right to control his own work.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #33 –
I'm with TBeck here. If it's not zealotry it's plain piracy and theft. If you're so inclined with open source go develop your own open, competitive, innovative alternative to accelerate the speed at which improvements propagate  ::)
Even though I don't use TAK (while it's damn good, I care about compatibility and FLAC is good enough) I hope that TBeck will keep releasing, even under strict licensing. Although it indeed would be good to somehow secure the algorithm in case if something bad happens, so the knowledge isn't lost.
And hey, there were numerous demands for fb2k to go foss, and it doesn't. And I'm glad.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #34 –
Does the open-source encoder contain any stolen intellectual property? It's entirely possible to craft a TAK encoder without looking at any of TBeck's code (and without looking at any of libavcodec's code, if you're worried it may be based on stolen code).

I'm not familiar with the laws in every country, but at least in the United States, that type of reverse engineering is not considered theft of intellectual property. And, based on my not-a-lawyer understanding, that type of reverse engineering is not prohibited by the TAK license either.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #35 –
Quote from: rutra80 on
I'm with TBeck here. If it's not zealotry it's plain piracy and theft. If you're so inclined with open source go develop your own open, competitive, innovative alternative to accelerate the speed at which improvements propagate  ::)
Even though I don't use TAK (while it's damn good, I care about compatibility and FLAC is good enough) I hope that TBeck will keep releasing, even under strict licensing. Although it indeed would be good to somehow secure the algorithm in case if something bad happens, so the knowledge isn't lost.
And hey, there were numerous demands for fb2k to go foss, and it doesn't. And I'm glad.

If it's clean room design, it's neither theft, nor piracy.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #36 –
It may be legal, but it's still [vulgar slang] to disrespect the author's wishes, so you can't really blame him for being upset about it.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #37 –
I call authors of any codecs that support only Windows platform [vulgar slang].

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #38 –
.... and they are free to note your particular opinion and disregard it as irrelevant, should they so choose to.

The "it *must* be multi-platform or bust" attitude is, at its core, one of unearned entitlement. Sure, it'd be nice to have - but we don't always get what we want, for free in this case.
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #39 –
Most of people here are [vulgar slang] and nothing more. Time to move on and forget about this stinky place.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #40 –
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't LAME and other MP3 encoders in a similar situation as this for years and years? The license didn't allow an encoder using copyrighted algorithms to be released without paying a fee, but that didn't stop the LAME team.
Allegari nihil et allegatum non probare, paria sunt.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #41 –
Quote from: rutra80 on
I'm with TBeck here. If it's not zealotry it's plain piracy and theft.

TAK is based on an idea.  Someone implementing an alternative way of accomplishing an idea is neither piracy nor theft.  There is no evidence presented that this is anything other than a clean room implementation.

Quote from: Aleron Ives on
Do you reject the concept of intellectual property?
The concept of intellectual property does not protect ideas.  If we're going to accuse someone of theft, then at least point towards some evidence. Nobody has the moral, much less legal, right to concepts.  "Theft" would involve the duplication of protected code, not simply implementing a parallel path to the same destination.

Creature of habit.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #42 –
Quote from: TBeck on
I don't have a noteworthy problem with a truely alternative implementation but with a reverse-engineered copy of my algorithms.  I have good reasons to believe that such a copy exists since 2016. How likely is it, that this announcement is independent from it?

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #43 –
If speculation that implementation B is not independent of implementation A, and that implementation A is speculated to be "reverse-engineered" from TAK is what passes as "evidence" then go ahead and fuel up my Embraer Legacy for me, as there's no hope for a reconciliation towards reasonable discourse.

We won't even get into the fact that "reverse-engineered" covers everything from a clean room implementation to the disassembly of binaries.
Creature of habit.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #44 –
Quote from: ssjkakaroto on
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't LAME and other MP3 encoders in a similar situation as this for years and years?
MP3 encoders were dealing with patents, not copyrights. Before the MP3 patents all expired, it was difficult or impossible for MP3 encoders to avoid every MP3 patent.

Quote from: Soap on
We won't even get into the fact that "reverse-engineered" covers everything from a clean room implementation to the disassembly of binaries.
Right, that's why I specified reverse-engineering without looking at any code.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #45 –
This thread isn't much fun ...

Honestly, after the 2.3.1 release where TBeck declared that "Practical goals are Linux binaries and open source releases" (quoting the README since then), I actually thought that an open source implementation would be welcome. I still thought that when I posted Reply #1 above. Obviously I didn't quite hit bullseye on that.

It wouldn't hurt to ask, I guess.  And, come new situation, it wouldn't hurt to ask again. 

Which kinda is more important than the legalese discussion, where - IANAL! - there seems to be no restrictions in the license on using the software to reverse-engineer the format. There are even a couple of buzzwords that, not unlikely, will be taken to specifically allow for it - even if the following is not quite the same:

Quote from: ssjkakaroto on
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't LAME and other MP3 encoders in a similar situation as this for years and years? The license didn't allow an encoder using copyrighted algorithms to be released without paying a fee, but that didn't stop the LAME team.
Some differences, some similarities. One big difference is how MP3 had patents, at least in countries where algorithms could at all be considered patentable inventions, rather than discoveries of logico-mathematical formulae. LAME was then distributed as source, not as executable. Source code is speech - again IANAL, but the AL's certainly could not stop it - and could be distributed simply because under free speech you do not really have to justify why you "want to tell anyone who wants to listen that an MP3 encoder could work the following way".

Hence LAME was published as an educational project - how to make MP3 better and document it. And so, if after the LAME story you do license away your codec for free use for educational purposes, then well, what can you expect ...
Maybe something better than the reference - like in case of LAME - maybe something that compresses notably worse and apparently serves only the purpose of bringing the format to the users - like in case of ffmpeg's ALAC encoder, which isn't much good.
Though ... frankly, ALAC is not a good thing.
TAK is. Too good not to be supported.

Still it wouldn't hurt to ask, though.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #46 –
Well, technically you can do a lot, is there any boundary of value ?
Well, some frames in some sort of shape, evaporating some chunks down some bits..wow.
Nevertheless there are still some different lossless codecs around with all having their history and reason being available, and with some outstanding individual features. This is probably also due to individual concepts and strategies, and some are not being made available, creators choice.

Without the real TAK there won't be any clone, basically, TAK is actively developed and as far as I remember Thomas decided to stay with closed source for the moment.
Might be an adult with reasons.

Question left open is to what set of rules you bind yourself to.

So...I suggest to let me use your faces..I got this idea, you accidentally laughed into my camera, and nooo, c'mon, not really, noo, I tell you, this worn peace of skin is of no value... *skrewing hammering flashes*

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #47 –
Quote from: ktf on
In the EU, reverse engineering is only allowed to achieve compatibility,

This is incorrect.  In the EU (assuming you mean 2009/24/EC) decompilation (without permission) is effectively the only form of RE restricted with the compatibility clause. In general, RE is fully legal.

I'm not going to debate the legality of RE here anymore, as it's plainly legal in both the US and EU, short of some very specific situations for which no evidence has been presented.  If anyone wants to take this off-line I'll happily share an email address or phone # to continue.




Creature of habit.

Re: Open Source TAK encoder

Reply #48 –
[editing away comment on something that was edited away]
At https://www.mwe.com/insights/new-german-law-protection-trade-secrets/ , a more recent change in German law (this piece of software is released in Germany) is discussed, and reverse engineering in particular in the second bullet item.

IANAL, as always.