Fedora's way forward

[Eric S. Raymond]

sean <seanlkml at sympatico.ca>:
> Well, Fraunhofer has this page:
> 
> http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/licensing/index.html
> 
> Which links to :
> 
> http://www.mp3licensing.com/
> 
> Which definitely shows royalty fees for decoders.

It does.  I stand corrected.  

The page says $50K one time flat fee for a decoder.  Is there any good
reason Red Hat shouldn't simply buy that license for some outfit with
a track record, like the lame developers?  MP3 problem solved,
relatively cheaply (e.g., less than half the annual cost ofjust one
additional full-time coder).

Yes, I know feeding patent parasites is unpleasant.  But we come back to
the central question here: do we want ideological purity at the expense of 
victory, or do we want actual victory so that *we* get to effectively set
the terms of software development in the future?

I know which side of that question *I* come down on...
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>