Royalty free gstreamer plug-in

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
>> That is not accurate.  Use of the MIT license doesn't change the patent
>> situation.
> 
> Could you expand on that point a bit ? Calling something "the patent
> situation" doesn't tell me exactly what you mean.
> 
> FWIW, for most distributions the problem with mp3 code is precisely that
> all these decoders were GPL-licensed, and the GPL has a clause that
> terminates your right to distribute if you cannot distribute freely to
> all (remember, IANAL).  So the problem was in the GPL, not in the code
> or in the fact that patents apply.

Red Hat in general and Fedora in particular are a tad different.

So far Red Hat has not seen GPL and other FOSS licensing as constraints 
that need to be worked around to earn money, but was always very serious 
about promoting clean FOSS practices (as evidenced by the re-licensings 
of the assets they bought, early Gnome support, etc).

Lots of distros have tried clever licensing schemes to get around FOSS 
IP "problems". Caldera was marketed as the distro for businesses (ie 
people who gave dang about FOSS ethics). Mandriva has often played this 
game too. For a very long time Suse didn't want to free yast. Need I 
write about ndsiwraper too ?

Well the market chose. It seems people that matter (which influence 
purchases) care more about FOSS ethics than marketing people think. At 
this point squandering all the goodwill accrued by taking a firm FOSS 
stand would be something very stupid for Red Hat to do. Because your 
offer is very nice, and as a user I welcome it, but I would never make a 
long-term commitment to a distro that swallowed such a poison pill. I 
might as well start using Solaris.

People write about Red Hat being the next Microsoft (or other such 
stupid things). The truth is the software Fedora delivers is as 
ethically pure as Debian's, and at least you don't have to wait years 
for it to get out of the release process.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot