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It's legit because Cisco are paying the license fees (mentioned in the article)

Only if you use the binary module, not the source code.

Yeah, but that's like someone paying for an all-you-can-eat buffet and then smuggling in a few bus loads of hungry people. Just because you paid for it doesn't mean it's what the people you bought it from were intending.

They're licensing per user - just that MPEG-LA has a upper bound of what to pay annually (currently $6.5 million). That's something that Cisco can probably better manage than not being able to move forward with their plans.

Question is if MPEG-LA closes that loop hole the next time they revisit licensing payments (but then, how? Microsoft and Apple profit from the same provisions, for example).

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