On Wednesday 25 January 2006 21:53, Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There is no difference between decoders and encoders. Both require > patent licenses. There are a few references to a statement by some of > the patent holders (Thomson IIRC, the company representing one of the > larger MP3 pools) that free[1] decoders can use a royalty-free > license. This statement has either never been made by Thomson, or it > has been withdrawn. Thomson has no intent to go after purely > non-commercial activities, though. So Debian itself should be fine, > but Debian distributors probably aren't. > > [1] "free" as in "beer". If you use your free-as-in-freedom GPLed > decoder for commercial activities, you need to obtain a license. > Thomson made that one pretty clear.
This factor makes it significantly different from the other programs which are afflicted with patent claims. If Thomson has made clear statements about a common use case of software based on their patents in Debian then it's quite different to a battle between Adobe and Macromedia. -- http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
