Hmm... Valid points... Does Debian have a patent lawyer kicking around with the project who could help out?... It's certainly not worth paying one for the sake of a single package (have you SEEN their fees?.. Eesh..), but if we have someone on retainer already, or if there happens to be a friend-of-friend connection to someone who'd be willing to look into it, it may be worth it. I've always been proud of the fact that Debian tries to be lawful as much as possible (I defend the pine4 fiasco to my friends constantly.. It's their one big bitch about Debian), but if LAME can be distributed legally somehow, that would be great.
Either way, I only butted in in the first place to try to lend a bit more perspective to the debate, but I do realize that this has been hashed out time and again by many people, so if we've done all we can reasonably do without dropping great sums of cash to hire counsel, then maybe we should just let it drop again. ... Adam -----Original Message----- From: Josip Rodin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 11:18 AM To: Adam Conrad Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Mark Purcell' Subject: Re: Bug#90091: ITP: lame - mp3 encoder On Sun, Mar 18, 2001 at 11:04:28AM -0700, Adam Conrad wrote: > As I understand it, it's only the end-users of encoders (not the writers or > distributors) who are subject to the licensing fee. AFAICT distribution falls under use. But we'd have to see the exact text of the patent to verify that, and possibly an opinion by a patent lawyer. (ugh :) > In the end, it looks to me like it's the end user's responsibility here, not > the distributor, and I'd hate to see a package not make it in because The > Debian Project is going to assume that their US and German users are > unwilling to read a disclaimer and act accordingly. Yeah, but we can never be careful enough, who knows what their lawyers might want to do to us... -- Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
