Red Hat's "Cowardice" against Software Patents

[Ben Finney]

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr at thyrsus.com> writes:

> Horst von Brand <vonbrand at inf.utfsm.cl>:
> > Which SUSE? The paid one? No problem, they can pay for the codecs.
> 
> Which, I'm suggesting, Red Hat could do also.

Which would be useless to Fedora, and would also be useless to anyone
downstream (i.e. wanting to re-distribute Fedora). Just because Red
Hat obtain a license to exercise the technology covered by the patent
doesn't grant anyone downstream of them a license.

If you *can* get Fraunhofer to grant a patent license that applies to
everyone downstream of the party to whom the license is granted, for a
price that party is able to pay, then you've effectively negated the
monopoly of that particular patent.

I would welcome such a scenario, but I think it has "a snowball's
chance in a supernova" of occurring, to quote some recently-seen
hyperbole.

-- 
 \        "The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but |
  `\      because of those who look at it without doing anything."  -- |
_o__)                                                  Albert Einstein |
Ben Finney