This is a large and old topic but I'll attempt to summarize.

1. The difference between $0 and even the smallest license fee is essentially infinite; just the friction to track and collect license fees would basically kill off the open source ecosystem. Also, it really rubs some people the wrong way that you can get a complete operating system and hundreds of apps for free but a single modern video codec used to cost money.

2. Codec patent licenses are sometimes kind of trolly; some codecs want to charge fees per minute of video instead of per encoder/decoder which is an accounting nightmare and feels abusive.

> What's wrong with paying license fees?

Let us begin with the fact there are at least three different legal entities in which you have to talk with, each with different schemes:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...

At least with H.264 you only had one.

How do you produce a legal open-source implementation?

There are plenty of legal open source H.264, MP3, etc implementations. AFAIK source code license and patents are orthogonal concepts. You can use any source code, proprietary, open source or written by yourself, but you should have permission from patent owners, because you're likely using their patented algorithms.

So, to produce a legal open-source (as in "free to reuse and fork") implementation, the implementor would need to obtain a permission from the patent holders, and make sure it covers all the possible derived work?

Is this known to have ever been achieved?

It's not about writing code, it's about using algorithms. If you're using MP3 algorithms to make money selling phones, you have to pay a fee. If you're using MP3 algorithms to make money selling your WinAMP player, you have to pay a fee. Whether you found implementation on github or read patents and implemented it yourself, does not matter. I don't think that you have to obtain a permission just to write implementation out of curiosity, but I may be wrong. And I have no idea about status of open source projects which include patented algorithms, but distributed free of charge. Probably they can't do that, because Linux distributions did not distribute mp3 codecs by default.

Also all of this is applicable to countries where those patents are working, of course.

Not surprised you are downvoted. On one hand HN complains about IP being stolen on the other hand they want all IPs to be free.

I don't have a problem with paying license fees, it is just most of those companies don't agrees on it.

I could only wish we make the standard as free for Software Encode and Decode.

All Hardware Accelerated Encoder and Decode will be $0.5 per unit. And $0.3 for only Encoder Or Decoder. With no Caps.

For Mobile alone that is anywhere between $360M to $600M alone assuming all devices supports it. And if we include PC, Tablet, Console, All other accessories it is up to $1B per year, and for the life time of the Codec easily $10B+ in patents total split across all companies.

The consumer will be paying for it, and we all enjoy better video quality with smaller downloads. Unfortunately most of the sweet spot for newer codec tends to be in 4K or even 8K. I wish they could put a lot more focus on 1080P at 1 / 2Mbps. Where the vast majority of video on Internet could settle on.