HEIC support

[smoothscholar]

Is it possible to open heic files in the browser without downloading? Would make it much, much easier to use and work with heic.

[micbar]

See already existing discussions.

Technically easy, but apple has a patent on that, this is not allowed without paying.

[smoothscholar]

Nextcloud uses imaginary to convert heic to jpeg or something on the fly. I'm not sure if that sort of decoding falls under those patents, but I'm pretty sure those patents are primarily enforced against hardware manufacturers, especially considering EU patent law.

My thought process is nextcloud is much bigger than opencloud, and I haven't found any evidence of nextcloud being sued or having any heic related patent issues. There are other massive players like vlc who haven't received direct legal action, I'm pretty sure. I think opencloud has very little to worry about here.

I'm sure there are other considerations to enabling heic support, but heic is so common it's a necessity at this point.

[micbar]

There are no other considerations except the legal issue. Where can we get proof of your theory?

[smoothscholar]

I am not sure the level of proof or convincing your team may need...but I did some digging. It looks like open source software has never been sued for unlicensed HEVC use by the patent holders. If you find an example to the contrary, happy to look into it.

Nextcloud and VLC both use hevc knowing they will likely never be sued, opencloud can do the same.

Useful summary from AI: https://claude.ai/share/1e4467e5-bd1b-40fe-9bd5-47a32e489c0f

[bxtcns4tdp-art]

Haha ffmpeg includes full hevc support and basically every major software, open and closed source, uses it in some form, without any licensing at all. There is absolutely no issue with using hevc in opencloud. If MPEGLA and the other patent holders ever decide to take action against software use, there is a long list of companies and software distributions that ought to be afraid, and opencloud is very near the bottom of that list

[markrosan8]

I agree, I moved from nextcloud and not being able to preview heic has been a massive pain. Would love to see it added somehow @micbar

[bxtcns4tdp-art]

@micbar if you’re looking for a way to more definitively avoid legal risk, even though in my opinion there is none, what you can do is wrap hevc support in a separate open source extension or plugin that is distributed separately from the core opencloud software. Users must download and install this extension.

In most jurisdictions, this puts the responsibility of the license on the user, not the distributor and individual users will never be sued. This is the exact principle that ffmpeg and other open source hevc softwares use.

[micbar]

In most jurisdictions, this puts the responsibility of the license on the user, not the distributor and individual users will never be sued. This is the exact principle that ffmpeg and other open source hevc softwares use.

This is exactly the point. OpenCloud is a compiled binary wich includes all decoders. That is the issue here. Loading stuff from the host OS would bring in a whole new concept into opencloud. One if the biggest advantages of go, that it can be run without any external dependency is limiting our choices in that specific case.

[bxtcns4tdp-art]

The core question is, has any person or company been sued for using or distributing hevc capability in free and open source software?

If the answer is no, isn’t that conclusive?

I assume opencloud/heinlein has someone to handle legal matters? Have they done any analysis to answer this question?