Andrew Donnellan schrieb:
> But are the MPEG patentors *likely* to sue Debian?
>
> If Debian was sued over the MPEG patents, imagine what Slashdot and
> Digg would do to them - it wouldn't be great PR.
In case of MP3 one of the patent holders *did* take action against
"free" MP3 encoders (the Fraunhofer institute did send a lot of nasty
letters).
Personally I think the question is: Do you want to live on a minefield?
There may be companies out there that love pointing out that "Linux does
not respect interlectual property" - and they may lobby a patent
infringement lawsuit. In any case the free software community has more
to loose (credibility) than a suing patent holder ("well, who cares for
Slashdot if money can be made?").
As long as this mad patent system is active the free software community
should make as little obvious licensing mistakes as possible. Using MPEG
technology without paying fees is something pretty obvious, I'd say.
Maik Merten
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