1:07 p.m.
I read the Fedora Myths page today and thought the legal issues entry
was a bit on the conservative side. I'd like to see it be a little more
explicit about the situation:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMyths#head-37a0662e90f2aaad2607986eb8...
I would like to change this paragraph:
For example, Fedora includes several media players that support a wide
range of formats, but not does not supply plug-ins for media formats
that are restricted by patent licenses or legislation.
To this:
For example, Fedora includes several media players that support a
wide range of free and open formats but none that depend on formats
that are restricted by patent licenses or legislation. The Fedora
project realizes that many of our users are legally allowed to use
these proprietary codecs so we package media players that are
extensible via plugins. This allows third parties that are legally
allowed to distribute the codecs to make them available as plugin
packages that will work with our media players.
Does this cross the line to contributory infringement? It doesn't
mention any specific places a person can download from. It covers users
granted licenses by the owning companies as well as users in countries
where the patents are not valid. It doesn't encourage anyone to do
anything that is illegal; only points out that plugin packages are
available on the internet for those who have a right to use them.
-Toshio
1:12 p.m.
Hi
Does this cross the line to contributory infringement? It doesn't
mention any specific places a person can download from. It covers users
granted licenses by the owning companies as well as users in countries
where the patents are not valid. It doesn't encourage anyone to do
anything that is illegal; only points out that plugin packages are
available on the internet for those who have a right to use them.
-Toshio
Do you have wiki access, If so you can edit the wiki yourself. Link to
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems which clarifies the status
regards
Rahul
1:33 p.m.
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:42 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Do you have wiki access, If so you can edit the wiki yourself. Link
to
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems which clarifies the status
Yep. I can commit the change. I just wanted to see if anyone thought
the revision crossed any legal boundaries before doing so.
-Toshio
1:49 p.m.
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:42 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>Do you have wiki access, If so you can edit the wiki yourself. Link to
>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems which clarifies the status
>
>
Yep. I can commit the change. I just wanted to see if anyone thought
the revision crossed any legal boundaries before doing so.
-Toshio
That page already explains everything in a legally safe now. Is there
anything left to add there? . Just linking seems to be less ambiguous to me
regards
Rahul
1:49 p.m.
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 11:33 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:42 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Do you have wiki access, If so you can edit the wiki yourself. Link to
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems which clarifies the status
Yep. I can commit the change. I just wanted to see if anyone thought
the revision crossed any legal boundaries before doing so.
I wrote that section, and one draft had something like "Third-party
repositories independently provide restricted software for users in
jurisdictions where the legal issues noted [in ForbiddenItems] do not
apply".
Didn't commit it because I wasn't sure whether this would going too far
for Red Hat legal either. Personally I would think that it's OK, because
we haven't expressed an opinion or given any help to people to find the
relevant software, but IANAL.
--
Stuart Ellis
stuart(a)elsn.org
Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
GPG key fingerprint: 68B0 E291 FB19 C845 E60E 9569 292E E365 7098 ABEA
5:26 p.m.
On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 00:19 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:42 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>
>>Do you have wiki access, If so you can edit the wiki yourself. Link to
>>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems which clarifies the status
>>
>>
>
>Yep. I can commit the change. I just wanted to see if anyone thought
>the revision crossed any legal boundaries before doing so.
>
>-Toshio
>
>
That page already explains everything in a legally safe now. Is there
anything left to add there? . Just linking seems to be less ambiguous to me
It needs to explan that there are reasonably easy fixes to get full
multimedia. The myth is that Fedora is not suitable in a desktop
environment because it cannot do multimedia. The Facts are: 1) We don't
include them for legal reasons (this is already there, incl. the link to
ForbiddenItems). 2) We are sympathetic to the user's frustration and
have done what we can to help 3) There is a reasonably easy solution for
users who need this capability. We don't yet address points 2 and 3.
If you point someone to this page in order to read the legal section
they currently get the impression that we won't ship for legal reasons
*so* Fedora will always be second rate in terms of multimedia. I want
to expand on that so they leave feeling that Fedora won't ship legally
encumbered code *but* we've done our best to enable users to get the
multimedia experience they expect.
If their gripe is that they can't play mp3s, only giving an explanation
of why is telling them "Tough luck" which is a pretty unfriendly
response. An telling why plus information that we've thought about the
problem and there are solutions is "We hate the situation too but we're
doing what we can to not get sued and provide you with the multimedia
capabilities you desire."
I think my addition makes this second point. If no one thinks it's
problematic, I'll commit it.
-Toshio
5:32 p.m.
Hi
It needs to explan that there are reasonably easy fixes to get full
multimedia. The myth is that Fedora is not suitable in a desktop
environment because it cannot do multimedia. The Facts are: 1) We don't
include them for legal reasons (this is already there, incl. the link to
ForbiddenItems). 2) We are sympathetic to the user's frustration and
have done what we can to help 3) There is a reasonably easy solution for
users who need this capability. We don't yet address points 2 and 3.
are you sure?.
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc4/errata/#sn-why-no-mp3
links to fedorafaq.org which does answer common user queries.
regards
Rahul
5:37 p.m.
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 00:19 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>
>
>
>>On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:42 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Do you have wiki access, If so you can edit the wiki yourself. Link to
>>>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems which clarifies the status
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Yep. I can commit the change. I just wanted to see if anyone thought
>>the revision crossed any legal boundaries before doing so.
>>
>>-Toshio
>>
>>
>>
>>
>That page already explains everything in a legally safe now. Is there
>anything left to add there? . Just linking seems to be less ambiguous to me
>
>
It needs to explan that there are reasonably easy fixes to get full
multimedia. The myth is that Fedora is not suitable in a desktop
environment because it cannot do multimedia. The Facts are: 1) We don't
include them for legal reasons (this is already there, incl. the link to
ForbiddenItems). 2) We are sympathetic to the user's frustration and
have done what we can to help 3) There is a reasonably easy solution for
users who need this capability. We don't yet address points 2 and 3.
If you point someone to this page in order to read the legal section
they currently get the impression that we won't ship for legal reasons
*so* Fedora will always be second rate in terms of multimedia. I want
to expand on that so they leave feeling that Fedora won't ship legally
encumbered code *but* we've done our best to enable users to get the
multimedia experience they expect.
If their gripe is that they can't play mp3s, only giving an explanation
of why is telling them "Tough luck" which is a pretty unfriendly
response. An telling why plus information that we've thought about the
problem and there are solutions is "We hate the situation too but we're
doing what we can to not get sued and provide you with the multimedia
capabilities you desire."
I think my addition makes this second point. If no one thinks it's
problematic, I'll commit it.
-Toshio
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I've made a few small changes. Check it out now and see if you feel it
does a better job. I still want to avoid duplicating information
presented on the ForbiddenItems page, but I can certainly agree with
your points.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com
www.n-man.com
--
5:38 p.m.
On 8/20/05, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)redhat.com> wrote:
are you sure?.
Are we sure we are we sympathetic? I waffle on the answer to that
personally. Sometimes I'm personally very sympathetic to the plight of
users who want to start on the path but have practical constraints
that keep them using a perfectly open set of technologies. Sometimes I
just want to tell everyone to suck it up and to show some backbone and
choose to give up their oh-so-very-important proprietary encoded
entertainment and media. Really depends on the ratio of caffiene to
alcohol in my bloodstream.
-jef
6:03 p.m.
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 17:37 -0500, Patrick Barnes wrote:
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>If their gripe is that they can't play mp3s, only giving an explanation
>of why is telling them "Tough luck" which is a pretty unfriendly
>response. An telling why plus information that we've thought about the
>problem and there are solutions is "We hate the situation too but we're
>doing what we can to not get sued and provide you with the multimedia
>capabilities you desire."
>
>I think my addition makes this second point. If no one thinks it's
>problematic, I'll commit it.
>
I've made a few small changes. Check it out now and see if you
feel it
does a better job. I still want to avoid duplicating information
presented on the ForbiddenItems page, but I can certainly agree with
your points.
Much better. I changed the last couple lines to mention ForbiddenItems
has ideas that may aid in finding third-party plugins (while continuing
to plug the OSS alternatives). See if you agree with the change.
-Toshio
6:14 p.m.
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 18:38 -0400, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On 8/20/05, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> are you sure?.
Are we sure we are we sympathetic? I waffle on the answer to that
personally. Sometimes I'm personally very sympathetic to the plight of
users who want to start on the path but have practical constraints
that keep them using a perfectly open set of technologies. Sometimes I
just want to tell everyone to suck it up and to show some backbone and
choose to give up their oh-so-very-important proprietary encoded
entertainment and media. Really depends on the ratio of caffiene to
alcohol in my bloodstream.
Even if we aren't sympathetic to using closed formats we should be
sympathetic to people whose data has to be converted. Unfortunately we
can no more include an mp3=>ogg converter then we can an mp3 player.
-Toshio
11:54 p.m.
The only real problem with those new changes is that ForbiddenItems does
not and will not point users to other third-party plugins. The
technologies it refers to are part of Fedora Core and Extras, and it
will not point to sources for proprietary plugins. It only makes a
vague reference to using Google. That last bit of your changes will
only serve to mislead users who may already be frustrated. Because of
this, I will remove that small bit.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com
www.n-man.com
--
3:03 a.m.
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:54 -0500, Patrick Barnes wrote:
The only real problem with those new changes is that ForbiddenItems
does
not and will not point users to other third-party plugins. The
technologies it refers to are part of Fedora Core and Extras, and it
will not point to sources for proprietary plugins. It only makes a
vague reference to using Google. That last bit of your changes will
only serve to mislead users who may already be frustrated. Because of
this, I will remove that small bit.
There's both the bit about google and the bit about checking
fedorafaq.org. IMHO we have to address the fact that people may need to
use a specific format rather than an alternate. To do that we have to
let them know that they can install plugins from third parties to make
that happen. This can either be through the methods suggested at the
bottom of ForbiddenItems (indirect and possibly frustrating but it gets
people to scan through the list of legal problems and their OSS
alternatives on their way to a solution) or by placing some portion of
that information directly in FedoraMyths (such as my original
suggestion. Can you come up with some variant of that which satisfies
your desire to not duplicate information on ForbiddenItems?)
-Toshio
3:31 a.m.
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:54 -0500, Patrick Barnes wrote:
>The only real problem with those new changes is that ForbiddenItems does
>not and will not point users to other third-party plugins. The
>technologies it refers to are part of Fedora Core and Extras, and it
>will not point to sources for proprietary plugins. It only makes a
>vague reference to using Google. That last bit of your changes will
>only serve to mislead users who may already be frustrated. Because of
>this, I will remove that small bit.
>
>
There's both the bit about google and the bit about checking
fedorafaq.org. IMHO we have to address the fact that people may need to
use a specific format rather than an alternate. To do that we have to
let them know that they can install plugins from third parties to make
that happen. This can either be through the methods suggested at the
bottom of ForbiddenItems (indirect and possibly frustrating but it gets
people to scan through the list of legal problems and their OSS
alternatives on their way to a solution) or by placing some portion of
that information directly in FedoraMyths (such as my original
suggestion. Can you come up with some variant of that which satisfies
your desire to not duplicate information on ForbiddenItems?)
-Toshio
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I fail to see what you say we lack. We specify very specific
alternative formats on the ForbiddenItems page. These are formats that
are already supported by the media players in Fedora Core. There is no
need for users to install third-party plugins in order to gain support
for these formats. If a person needs a format not currently supported
by the programs in Core, they are likely seeking proprietary formats,
which we will not point them to. The information currently on the wiki
fully expresses the situation and cannot be expanded much more without
potentialy creating legal concerns. The information on the
ForbiddenItems page specifies formats that people can use. It is beyond
the scope of these wiki documents to detail how a user can make use of
the alternative formats. If you would like to write a how-to for users
who are interested in using these alternative formats, you can do so.
We will not direct users on how to use the proprietary formats or how to
convert files from those formats to the alternatives, nor will we tell
them how to add support for those formats, as doing so may violate the
laws that govern Fedora and Red Hat. If you wish to write a guide for
the alternates, you must keep this in mind. I would strongly encourage
you to work with someone on the Docs Project if you wish to do this.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com
www.n-man.com
--
3:41 a.m.
Patrick Barnes wrote:
Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 23:54 -0500, Patrick Barnes wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>The only real problem with those new changes is that ForbiddenItems does
>>not and will not point users to other third-party plugins. The
>>technologies it refers to are part of Fedora Core and Extras, and it
>>will not point to sources for proprietary plugins. It only makes a
>>vague reference to using Google. That last bit of your changes will
>>only serve to mislead users who may already be frustrated. Because of
>>this, I will remove that small bit.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>There's both the bit about google and the bit about checking
>fedorafaq.org. IMHO we have to address the fact that people may need to
>use a specific format rather than an alternate. To do that we have to
>let them know that they can install plugins from third parties to make
>that happen. This can either be through the methods suggested at the
>bottom of ForbiddenItems (indirect and possibly frustrating but it gets
>people to scan through the list of legal problems and their OSS
>alternatives on their way to a solution) or by placing some portion of
>that information directly in FedoraMyths (such as my original
>suggestion. Can you come up with some variant of that which satisfies
>your desire to not duplicate information on ForbiddenItems?)
>
>-Toshio
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>--
>Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>
>
>
I fail to see what you say we lack. We specify very specific
alternative formats on the ForbiddenItems page. These are formats that
are already supported by the media players in Fedora Core. There is no
need for users to install third-party plugins in order to gain support
for these formats. If a person needs a format not currently supported
by the programs in Core, they are likely seeking proprietary formats,
which we will not point them to. The information currently on the wiki
fully expresses the situation and cannot be expanded much more without
potentialy creating legal concerns. The information on the
ForbiddenItems page specifies formats that people can use. It is beyond
the scope of these wiki documents to detail how a user can make use of
the alternative formats. If you would like to write a how-to for users
who are interested in using these alternative formats, you can do so.
We will not direct users on how to use the proprietary formats or how to
convert files from those formats to the alternatives, nor will we tell
them how to add support for those formats, as doing so may violate the
laws that govern Fedora and Red Hat. If you wish to write a guide for
the alternates, you must keep this in mind. I would strongly encourage
you to work with someone on the Docs Project if you wish to do this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I thought I might add that the current version of the FedoraMyths page
does address that the programs can be extended with third-party plugins,
to about the fullest extent it can without concerns:
"Thanks to the extensibility of these media players, if there are
plugins for additional formats that are legal in your jurisdiction, you
may install them separately."
We really can't go into detail beyond that without creating risks. I
know that this may not seem like an ideal solution, especially to users
outside of the United States, but this is really all we can do.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com
www.n-man.com
--
4:26 a.m.
Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On 8/20/05, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>are you sure?.
Are we sure we are we sympathetic? I waffle on the answer to that
personally. Sometimes I'm personally very sympathetic to the plight of
users who want to start on the path but have practical constraints
that keep them using a perfectly open set of technologies. Sometimes I
just want to tell everyone to suck it up and to show some backbone and
choose to give up their oh-so-very-important proprietary encoded
entertainment and media. Really depends on the ratio of caffiene to
alcohol in my bloodstream.
-jef
You need to consider the user that is willing to move towards these open
sets of technology but does not have the knowledge as-yet.
If you block him/her from using his/her current files, you will drive
the said user away. where is good will? How do you convert them?
It's not conversion if you give them a box and tell them they won't be
able to use these gazillions of music files they love so much.
Giving them the ability to use these 'old' files and to create new ones
with open toolsets, this is the challenge.
Thierry
4:59 a.m.
On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 03:41 -0500, Patrick Barnes wrote:
I thought I might add that the current version of the FedoraMyths
page
does address that the programs can be extended with third-party plugins,
to about the fullest extent it can without concerns:
"Thanks to the extensibility of these media players, if there are
plugins for additional formats that are legal in your jurisdiction, you
may install them separately."
Ah -- I don't know how but I missed that sentence when I read the
updated version. Thanks.
We really can't go into detail beyond that without creating
risks. I
know that this may not seem like an ideal solution, especially to users
outside of the United States, but this is really all we can do.
The ForbiddenItems page is much more explicit:
Of course, the logical followup is: But I want to get foo and do bar,
how can I do one of the items listed above?
The unofficial [WWW]http://fedorafaq.org provides useful answers on
commonly asked questions.
-Toshio
10:10 a.m.
On 8/21/05, Thierry Sayegh <linux(a)glossolalie.org> wrote:
You need to consider the user that is willing to move towards these
open
sets of technology but does not have the knowledge as-yet.
If you block him/her from using his/her current files, you will drive
the said user away. where is good will? How do you convert them?
True.
This is why we can point to pages that will help them, and to
communities not directily associated with us which can provide them
with proprietary plugins.
It does suck big time not to be able to listen to OGG files using my
Palm, and I think instead of concentrating on stuff we cannot
influence (such as existing patents) we should become more active in
the area of spreading the open formats.
Like sit down with folks at Real, and get them to implement OGG codec
into RealOne player by default.
When barriers like this will fall, and when MP3 will not be the only
overwhelmingly supported media format, we will not HAVE to worry about
this stuff anymore.
It's not conversion if you give them a box and tell them they
won't be
able to use these gazillions of music files they love so much.
Giving them the ability to use these 'old' files and to create new ones
with open toolsets, this is the challenge.
It is a great challenge indeed. Oh well, you can't have it all at once.
But if instead of concentrating on ways to circumvent regulations for
our users we spend the same energy on pushing the support open media
formats in all poplular media players by default, such as RealPlayer,
or iPod, etc.--we will eventually achieve more AND make another step
towards freeing the culture.
a
--
Visit FUDCon London 2005
http://fedoraproject.org/fudcon
FUDCon:
Fedora Users and Developers Conference
11:46 a.m.
On 8/21/05, Toshio Kuratomi <toshio(a)tiki-lounge.com> wrote:
The ForbiddenItems page is much more explicit:
Of course, the logical followup is: But I want to get foo and do bar,
how can I do one of the items listed above?
The unofficial [WWW]http://fedorafaq.org provides useful answers on
commonly asked questions.
You can reference fedorafaq.org and call it a place to find answers
for common questions.. but you can not explictly state which questions
it answers. Thats the line.
How about instead of trying to re-interpret or expand on what the
forbiddenitems text as written, we either site the link or quote it
verbatim and leave it at that. Any expansion beyond the exact text as
written in the forbiddenitem page is going to need legal review. If
the text of the forbiddenitems page has room for improvement we should
inmprove the text on that page and use it as the cananoical
explanation in all other communication mediums.
-jef
11:49 a.m.
Alex Maier wrote:
Like sit down with folks at Real, and get them to implement OGG codec
into RealOne player by default.
When barriers like this will fall, and when MP3 will not be the only
overwhelmingly supported media format, we will not HAVE to worry about
this stuff anymore.
+1
It is a great challenge indeed. Oh well, you can't have it all at
once.
I live in a dream....
But if instead of concentrating on ways to circumvent regulations
for
our users we spend the same energy on pushing the support open media
formats in all poplular media players by default, such as RealPlayer,
or iPod, etc.--we will eventually achieve more AND make another step
towards freeing the culture.
a
+1
T
11:36 p.m.
On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 12:46 -0400, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On 8/21/05, Toshio Kuratomi <toshio(a)tiki-lounge.com> wrote:
> The ForbiddenItems page is much more explicit:
> Of course, the logical followup is: But I want to get foo and do bar,
> how can I do one of the items listed above?
>
> The unofficial [WWW]http://fedorafaq.org provides useful answers on
> commonly asked questions.
You can reference fedorafaq.org and call it a place to find answers
for common questions.. but you can not explictly state which questions
it answers. Thats the line.
If this wording passed legal, I'm not going to try to find fault with
it :-)
How about instead of trying to re-interpret or expand on what the
forbiddenitems text as written, we either site the link or quote it
verbatim and leave it at that. Any expansion beyond the exact text as
written in the forbiddenitem page is going to need legal review. If
the text of the forbiddenitems page has room for improvement we should
inmprove the text on that page and use it as the cananoical
explanation in all other communication mediums.
That would be excellent. I would agree with either of those approaches.
-Toshio
2:20 a.m.
On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 03:31 -0500, Patrick Barnes wrote:
If you wish to write a guide for
the alternates, you must keep this in mind. I would strongly encourage
you to work with someone on the Docs Project if you wish to do this.
Formal Fedora documentation is only about what ships in Fedora,
regardless of legal obstacles. Ask me again in a few years about
documenting things outside of Core and Extras, once we have all the good
stuff included.
How about this as a non-solution? Toshio can write up an explanation of
how media players work with plug-ins, and post that as a Wiki page.
Nothing explicit about third-parties and patents, just that it is
extensible and how it works/what to look for. This solves the problem
of trying to show users what their tools can do. If they want to use
that tool for something illegal, such as playing music too loudly after
local quiet hours are enforced ...
Perhaps somewhere in FedoraMyths there could be a link from "supported
players" to this page. Standard useful linking to useful information.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41
Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
6:55 a.m.
I'm in favor of this change. Go ahead and make it.
And no, pointing out that it's possible to infringe does not count in any
way as contributory infringement.
We worry more about something like this: "for lots of great software, go
to THIS COOL SITE." Which *is* contributory infringement, if we know that
THIS COOL SITE has infringing code.
--g
_____________________ ____________________________________________
Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent. the
Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the
] [ dumb. --mcluhan
On Sat, 20 Aug 2005, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
I read the Fedora Myths page today and thought the legal issues
entry
was a bit on the conservative side. I'd like to see it be a little more
explicit about the situation:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMyths#head-37a0662e90f2aaad2607986eb8...
I would like to change this paragraph:
For example, Fedora includes several media players that support a wide
range of formats, but not does not supply plug-ins for media formats
that are restricted by patent licenses or legislation.
To this:
For example, Fedora includes several media players that support a
wide range of free and open formats but none that depend on formats
that are restricted by patent licenses or legislation. The Fedora
project realizes that many of our users are legally allowed to use
these proprietary codecs so we package media players that are
extensible via plugins. This allows third parties that are legally
allowed to distribute the codecs to make them available as plugin
packages that will work with our media players.
Does this cross the line to contributory infringement? It doesn't
mention any specific places a person can download from. It covers users
granted licenses by the owning companies as well as users in countries
where the patents are not valid. It doesn't encourage anyone to do
anything that is illegal; only points out that plugin packages are
available on the internet for those who have a right to use them.
-Toshio
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9 participants
participants (9)
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Alex -
Greg DeKoenigsberg -
Jef Spaleta -
Karsten Wade -
Patrick W. Barnes -
Rahul Sundaram -
Stuart Ellis -
Thierry -
Toshio Kuratomi