If there were definitely no legal encumbrances, surely they'd want to keep shipping the version with the proprietary codecs in, because that would make them a s

If there were definitely no legal encumbrances, surely they'd want to keep shipping the version with the proprietary codecs in, because that would make them a superior option for users who need those? AFAICT someone upstream thought that having the toggle to avoid patent issues was important, which if true nixes the idea that VA-API just gives you an automatic unencumbered route and you don't have to worry about it after that. I'm not really sure what actual claim you're making regarding the relevance of “pro-patent views”, but I might interpret it as something like “Red Hat is more likely to play it safe, whereas less IBM-enculturated distributions are more likely to bet on interpretations that let the users take on the risk”. Which I think is probably true; for instance, https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/xqn20n/comment/iqbmvi0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/xqn20n/comment/iqbmv... describes how other distributions chose differently and moved to re-enable the proprietary codecs by default. (Some of them seem to be based in friendlier jurisdictions, mind. I'm not completely sure where BMD is, and I'm not sure how much it matters given they want to sell worldwide, but their full corporate name resolves most strongly to Australia: https://opengovau.com/business/30098098287 https://opengovau.com/business/30098098287 and Australia doesn't seem to exclude software from patentability: https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/what-are-patents/what-computer-related-inventions-can-be-patented https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/what-are-patents/what...) Anyway, if that's what you meant, I don't think that distinction is nearly as applicable to the situation with Resolve. BMD isn't a producer of a Linux distribution containing a broad variety of stuff, where “users happen to do stuff with the open source software we provide that violates some patents” can maybe be waved off as not their responsibility. BMD is very obviously directly operating in the commercially-distributed professional video tooling market, so codec licensing will be something they have to deal with as a keystone part of their business. Adding something to their software to actively enable people to do professional-style encoding for those codecs without the patent licenses would be playing with fire.