Patent-free software where it makes sense

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I can't speak for Europe, but in the US Constitution it's fairly clearly stated:

"The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science
and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and
Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries"

In the case of software the implementation of the law may be
problematic, but still, as an author and inventor I'd want those
rights.

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Alex Puchades <alex94puchades at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems [1] that there are mixed opinions about the matter. I'll check with
> fedora-legal. In any case, things like this [2][3][4] are really sad.
>
> [1] https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html
> [2] http://david.freetype.org/cleartype-patents.html
> [3] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/europes-unitary-patent.html
> [4] http://www.epo.org/news-issues/issues/unitary-patent.html
>
>
> 2015-06-10 20:30 GMT+02:00 Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to>:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 19:59:05 +0200,
>>  Ahmad Samir <ahmadsamir3891 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> The funny thing about the MP3 patent expiring is that really MP3 is
>>> going away, and has been going away for some time now; AAC encoded
>>> audio in an MP4 container is becoming more prevalent these days, and
>>> of course AAC is another codec you can't legally add in a distro that
>>> resides in the u.s. .... so it looks like a race, one that Linux is
>>> losing unless users add 3rd party repos that can package those
>>> patent-encumbered codecs; 3rd party repos have a lower risk of getting
>>> sued, since they're individuals and suing them wouldn't bring in that
>>> much money anyway (you need to sue a big wealthy company to justify
>>> the lawyer hourly fees :)), of course IANAL, so don't take my views on
>>> legal matters to heart.
>>
>>
>> Opus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_%28codec%29) has become an
>> important audio codec that doesn't have patent problems.
>>
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Álex Puchades
>
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