Royalty free gstreamer plug-in

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at redhat.com> said:
> I am not sure about that. Even if everyone agrees on that here we still 
> might need to consult the legal team before proceeding with this. 
> Everyone here might reach a position that makes the obvious sense but 
> thats not necessary what the law says. So lets talk to the counsel and 
> halt the discussion for now.

Red Hat has an inconsistent position on patents and source.  For some
things, the source is stripped of the code (so no more pristine source),
but for others, the source shipped still includes the problem code (it
just isn't compiled).

- For MP3, the code is removed.

- OpenSSH has the CSS code removed (which I guess is DMCA related not
  patent; it is also a pretty lame OpenSSH attempt to make a political
  "statement" by including undocumented, non-standard, and unneeded
  "features").

- OpenSSL has numerous patent bits removed from the source.  This is a
  change; IIRC in the past it was just built without the patented bits
  enabled (they were still in the source).

- NTFS code remains in the kernel source; the reason cited for not
  building it is patents.

- Font bytecode interpreter is disabled in freetype but the code remains
  and the spec file even provides a build option to include it.  From
  what I understand, it is not enabled due to patents.

Why is it okay to ship the source to some things that are not used for
patent reasons but not to ship the source to others?
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.