On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 22:39, Chris Adams wrote:
Once upon a time, Ricky Boone <whiplash(a)planetfurry.com> said:
> Why exactly is this still an issue? Since Fedora is not a Red Hat
> product, only a Red Hat sponsered project, these copyright issues
> shouldn't concern them anymore.
It isn't a copyright issue, it is a patent infringement issue, and
anyone that distributes infringing software can be sued. This means Red
Hat (as the primary distributor) as well as all the Red Hat mirrors
could be sued for distributing unlicensed MP3 software if MP3 software
was included in the distribution.
Aa I understand it, the only time when distributing MP3 codecs is an
issue is if they are part of a product that is being sold, if, like XMMS
and winamp the product is distributed for free then there is no problem
with including MP3 functionality, so while there is some ambiguity
whether Red Hat could include MP3 players Fedora shouldn't have a
problem, I could be wrong though
--
James
jamesk[at]homeric[dot]co[dot]uk
Don't take life too seriously, you won't get out alive.