The Multimedia Question

[Luis Villa]

On 7/19/07, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Luis Villa wrote:
>
> >
> > I'd strongly suggest having more detail than that in anything you
> > propose to legal.
> >
> > * who will choose what that points at?
> > * where (geography, hardware) will they be hosted, and by who?
> > * will it be source-available-but-patent-encumbered only? or will it
> > include no-source options? or some other line?
> > * what type of education do you plan to do? might it admit (or not)
> > that there is a belief or public allegation that patents are
> > infringed? if it does not, how is the whole exercise publicly
> > justified?
>
> Third party repository containing only Free but patent encumbered
> software hosted outside of US in a region not affected by software
> patents and in resources provided external to Red Hat. The same website
> might have other repositories but those won't be enabled by default or
> accessed directly by us. The end user functionality looks something like
> this:
>
> * You click on content encoded in a format that we don't support by default
>
> * We use the hook in gstreamer to call a small GTK application that says:
>
> This content is in a restricted patent encumbered format that Fedora
> Project does not provide support by default. If you are in a region that
> enforces software patents (such as U.S) you can download or buy licensed
> codecs. Others users can install the free plugin. What would you like to do?
>
> A) Learn about Free and better quality alternatives -  lead to a web
> page that explains all about Free formats such as Ogg.
>
> B) Download or buy licensed Codecs -> leads to a different section in
> the same page as A) that points to the Fluendo web shop.
>
> C) Install plugin support - Downloads the appropriate plugin package
> from the third party repository directly. If there is no net access fail
> gracefully after informing the user.
>
> Does this sound sane

Sounds sane-ish...

> and answer all the questions necessary for legal?
>
>> Luis (DEFINITELY NOT LEGAL)

I have no idea, you'd have to ask legal.

Some simple math: there are dozens of volunteers on this list alone,
and hundreds who have thought about this problem across the various
projects involved. There is exactly one lawyer at Red Hat who can
answer your questions, and he's possibly the busiest person in the
entire department. So it behooves you to use as much volunteer time as
possible, and as little lawyer time as possible. You guys are not
lawyers, but you are smart. Brainstorm, research a bit, try to cover
all the bases and communicate it with both depth and succinctness.

(And be prepared for the possibility of getting a flat 'no' as soon as
you raise the issue, of course.)

Luis