Fedora - DELL ?

[Andy Green]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Andy Green wrote:
> 
>>>> I betcha Dell has a CFO too. And, I bet they don't ship something with
>>>> mp3 playback loaded and ready to use in it, as shipped. Wait and see
>>>> what happens. :) Ric
>>>
>>> Did you happen to not notice that virtually every Dell currently 
>>> shipped has mp3 playback loaded - also WMA and most would have dvd 
>>> too.  It's Linux that brings a problem into this picture.
>>
>> No.  It is patent law that brings that problem into the picture.
> 
> Perhaps, but what is your solution?  The law is what it is until it 
> changes.  And it is probably not going to change in such a way that 
> makes it impossible to control distribution of new inventions.

Did I promise to solve your problem?  I pointed out that where you were 
laying blame (not solving any problems I could see) was wrong and 
explained why.  Maybe it can help you solve your problem.

>> While it is protected by law (and all the penalties the state can 
>> apply) then the patented content in proprietary codecs give 
>> proprietary software a reason to go on.  You are ragging on the wrong 
>> people if you think that is Linux or Fedora's fault.  The problem is 
>> patent law.
> 
> I'm confused about what 'problem' you mean.  I'll agree that patent law 

This problem: ''It's Linux that brings a problem into this picture.'' 
Mentioned after your noting that Dells ship with MP3 and WMA and "It's 
Linux that brings a problem into this picture.".  The reason Linux 
distros don't ship with that support is patents.  I hope that clears up 
your sudden attack of 'confusion'.

> is flawed in a lot of ways.  I don't agree that it should be impossible 
> to control distribution of your own work in ways that don't interfere 
> with other's rights to do the same.  The problem I see is that even if 

Okay so here you disagree with something I never asserted.

> you are willing to meet the licensing terms of all the components you 
> want to have, no one is allowed to combine them for you if any part is 
> covered by the GPL and any other part has different restrictions.

These are completely separate areas in law.  The GPL operates under 
Copyright law.  But the work you have fully legitimate copyright to can 
easily violate dozens of patents, which is regulated by a completely 
separate body of patent law.  Let's imagine your enduser view of the GPL 
making problems was solved.  Say the GPL became BSD overnight.  Still 
Redhat cannot bundle mp3 players due to patent law.

I have to say I noted the irony of your using Alan Cox's code in the 
networking stack to piss him off.  Seems your complaints should be 
tempered by some recognition that a lot of work went into giving us this 
stuff for free.  Without acknowledging the debt, your complaints sound 
like a teenager complaining about how unfair his life is, while he lives 
under a roof he doesn't have to pay for, eats food, wears clothes that 
are given to him.

>> In 2010 IIRC Linux will have zero problem with MP3 playback out of the 
>> box, because the Frauenhofer patent will have expired [1].  But it 
>> will continue to have problems playing back $RANDOM_CURRENT_CONTENT 
>> because it will be encoded in some new patented format that neither 
>> expired nor appears in Linspire's catalogue.  You can probably play it 
>> anyway thanks to mplayer, but that's not the point.
> 
> How is this going to change?  I expect encodings to continue to improve 
> and for people to continue to need a way to fund the development work. 
> The GPL just doesn't provide a good model to fairly share those costs 
> and it doesn't co-exist well with the schemes that do.

Yeah that's actually right IMO.  About a year ago I had the same 
argument with ESR.  Proprietary software -- proprietary in the copyright 
sense -- is given meaning and a lease of life by proprietary codecs -- 
proprietary in the patent sense.  The two are symbiotic because they can 
share revenue.  The FOSS "niche" is everywhere else.

Because of great patent-free codecs like Matroska and Vorbis we are not 
locked out of participating in audio and video, but the content 
rightsholders, by their choice of patent-protected codings, can and will 
lock us out of being able to offer their content.  And despite ESR's 
naive hopes of getting rescued by Linspire, there is nothing that can be 
done about it from this side going on.  And who to blame?  Patent law.

-Andy