On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 10:18:59PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: > On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:49:53 +0100 Diego Biurrun wrote: > > > On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 01:15:00PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: > [...] > > > AFAICT, the usual Debian practice to deal with software patents is not > > > worrying about them unless they are actively enforced. > > > > This is not a description of Debian's practice when dealing with > > software patents. > > It's what is usually said on debian-legal about the topic... > Obviously, there's no warranty that each and every package in Debian > follows consistently this practice. But it should, AFAIK.
There is no such thing as consistency and I have not seen this practice in writing anywhere. I'd be glad to see pointers to such a place. > > For example patents on browsers are actively > > enforced, but Debian turns a blind eye. > > In the sense that many people do *know* about those actively enforced > patents and, still, pretend there is no problem? Yes. Think about the company Eolas, which managed to extort millions from Microsoft with a patent on browser plugins. > > For some mysterious reason > > encoding software is treated different from everything else. > > Mmmh, I was under the impression that audio/video MPEG encoding was one > of the main fields encumbered by actively enforced software patents. > You instead claim that there are other fields with similar issues, > while the Debian Project seems to only care about MPEG patents... Yes. Note that distributors are never bothered about MPEG patents.. > Have you ever discussed this on debian-devel/debian-legal? Do you think it would be worth it? Do you think anybody would change opinions? Diego -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
