Summarizing this thread:

- I paid for a device with a properly licensed hdmi port. It runs linux. So patent exhaustion applies, at least in the US. I can say ignore the patents to make my property work.

- I have no relationship to the HDMI people. (Never entered into a contract with them.)

- The links to the spec are here. (Trade secrets/nda no longer apply. This is the problem with using trade secrets to protect your stuff.)

- If I point a coding assistant (assume open weights/source) at this thread, and a copy of linux main, it can probably just fix the damn driver.

- I could probably publish my patch with a big fat “only for use with licensed hdmi hardware, not for resale” disclaimer on it.

At that point, what law would I have broken?

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jokoon 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is that software distributors might break laws if the said drivers lands on unlicensed hdmi hardware, so they should be liable to check if the hardware is properly licensed, which might generate headaches.

Or maybe lawyers cannot anticipate everything that happens in court, so it just feels better to do things properly and not try to circumvent laws, especially when you're valve. It's better to not take risks.

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cmiles74 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect Valve's plan is to embarrass the license holder in the hope that they back down. I doubt a court battle would be worth the money.

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yxhuvud 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Either that or just wait out the problem. As long as the linux gaming market keeps growing the incitaments for the hardware people to change their minds will increasingly be there.

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mschuster91 2 days ago | parent [-]

What the (hardware) people want doesn't matter, at least as long as the IP owners have the deeper pockets.

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is a pretty universal saying, and it also applies here - the rational thing for MAFIAA et al would be to give up and engage in universal licensing schemes similar to the lesson the music industry learned well over a decade ago. There, you have virtually every single mainstream artist/band available everywhere... Apple Music, Youtube Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz and I'm sure I forgot a bunch. Piracy in music has all but vanished as a result.

We could have had that with Netflix, and a lot of IP catalogs actually were on Netflix, but because of naked greed it all splintered up, and everyone is running their own distinct streaming silos again.

	▲	yxhuvud a day ago \| parent [-]
		The thing about this kind of hardware standard is that the dominant hardware makers control the IP owners. Copyright is a totally different ballgame.

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mschuster91 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is, while Valve has balls of tungsten... MAFIAA et al have the money, much much more of it.

It makes a good underdog story, but unless Valve goes all-in and flashes a notification to every American Steam user "hey, write to your Congress reps to pass a law to fix this shit, and call their office every day until they publicly relent", no PR can force their hand. It took many years for Right to Repair bills to pass, and many of these only succeeded because the people pushing for it (aka farmers) are very well connected to their representatives and have very deep pockets of money.

The other solution is of course mass protests over civil disobedience to outright violence. That can work to force change as well, we've seen many a law changed in the past (most recently at scale during the Covid pandemic), but I don't see any big-tent movement going on against big-co extortion practices.

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thayne 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The problem is that software distributors might break laws if the said drivers lands on unlicensed hdmi hardware

Assuming the diatributor doesn't claim the software or device is hdmi licensed, what laws would they be breaking?

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ruined 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

debian and arch package managers ask you to accept EULAs when necessary to install, so the compliance infrastructure exists.

i think they are configured to auto-accept by default but that's been fine so far hasn't it

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mft_ 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would it be feasible for a driver patch to be shared via e.g. an anonymous torrent, with a checksum (to certify authenticity) held somewhere more reliable, like GitHub?

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mikepurvis 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Sounds like what we used to go through years ago with sound editors that had to have a separate button for downloading and inserting the MP3 encoder because the Fraunhofer license prohibited it from being directly distributed with the software.

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account42 a day ago | parent | next [-]

No, with MP3 the encoders/decoders source code was always available in the normal source code repositories (e.g. FFMPEG) - the problem was just with binary distributions.

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tucnak 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is still the case in Audacity... doesn't rip mp3's out the box.

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cartoonworld 2 days ago | parent [-]

Sure it does, it just always relied on external encoders.

I use audacity for recording vinyl occasionally, but for CD audio I have a bunch of cli scripts. Much easier.

	▲	bdavbdav 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		If those external encoders are there. That’s the “non-free” checkbox / package in Linux.

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binkHN 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Post the patch in a country that doesn't care? I remember OpenBSD used to do something similar with encryption to get around US laws.

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rtpg 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think Canonical did this with codecs for a long time too, behind a prompt

	▲	extraduder_ire 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Linux mint didn't need to ask due to being released from France, where software patents did not apply.

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aoeusnth1 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe nothing, but can you afford to prove that in court?

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bobdvb 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I need to post this everywhere:

THIS ISN'T AN IP/PATENT ISSUE!

This is branding and marketing issue. Anyone can implement the spec, it doesn't need to be a cleanroom implementation. It's almost certain that you could license the patents from the patent holders because HDMI doesn't develop it's own patentable stuff, they just get it from Sony, Panasonic, etc.

THIS IS A MARKETING / BRANDING ISSUE.

Saying they don't want an open source implementation is just a smokescreen. 99% of the implementation is in hardware anyway.

	▲	heeen2 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		So you're saying they could just make the driver compliant without advertising compliance under the hdmi logo? similar to how e.g. oneplus shipped phones without advertising their higher IPX rating because certification would have cost too much, or chinese electronics supporting "tf card" instead of "micro sd card" but being compatible anyways
	▲	IsTom 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		So why don't AMD and Valve release ICan'tBeliveit'sNotHDMI2.1 drivers?

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userbinator 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If you take the effort to anonymise your contributions, can they afford to try to find you?

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firesteelrain 3 days ago | parent [-]

It’s not about individual users. It’s about Valve redistributing it.

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hedora 3 days ago | parent [-]

This affects 100% of linux boxes with an hdmi port, so valve is making a tiny fraction of the impacted hardware.

	▲	firesteelrain 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		My point was that the HDMI Foundation/Org isn’t going after hobbyists at home. But if a hobbyist were to sell an unlicensed HDMI 2.1 box then the IP holder would likely go after them. In their eyes, in that case, the IP is being pirated. This is very similar to h.264 however however in that case the standard is public, commercial use requires paying a fee. Licensing of the HDMI 2.1 specification requires an NDA for specification testing that Valve is not able to perform in order to say that it is a HDMI 2.1 compliant system. They would be running afoul of the HDMI org’s licensing terms.