Is Xvid free to distribute and make money with?

[FractalCore]

I know Xvid is open-source, but does that mean I can sell a game which uses it for it's cutscenes?

If not, is there a codec (preferably an avi one) that is completely free to distribute?

[scotch]

As far as I know, xvid is patent encumbered, like mp3 is, and xvid isn't licensed with the patent holders.Ã,  Theora is one fully open source, patent free modern codec... not many people have the codec installed for it, though, so you'd probably have to provide that.

[voh]

Can I distribute your video codec along with some of my own videos on CD-ROM?

XviD is copyright-protected program code and is released under the terms of the GNU GPL license, which means you can distribute it freely, e.g. on a CD-ROM, provided that you meet the restrictions of the GPL license. For example, if you distribute the XviD codec in binary form, you have to add the source code to the CD-ROM, too.

But note that if you distribute XviD along with another software that links against XviD upon run-time, we consider this a derived work and you the GPL then requires you to publish the software as a whole under the terms of the GPL. Besides other rules, this requires provision of the enire work's source code.

It's GPL, so it's fine to do with whatever you want with it.

[scotch]

So are many mp3 decoders, it doesn't remove the patent issues.  Stupid software patents!
I don't think anyone would chase you down about it, but if you want to be technically totally legal you'd use something else.