fmf-frequently missed features and some general thoughts...

[Daniel Veillard]

On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 12:47:52PM +0200, Göran Uddeborg wrote:
> Gerald Henriksen writes:
> > >so patent violations can't get inforced in france, am i getting you
> > >right? i would be surprised if it's the same in germany, nevertheless
> > 
> > Patent laws vary from country to country,  and the tolerance for risk
> > can also vary from company to company.
> 
> If we want to be strict: Patent violations can surely be managed by
> French courts, I'm sure.  What is less clear is WHERE there are
> patents for WHAT.  If there IS a patent on MP3 valid in France, for
> example.

  I think people are drawing far too wide conclusions. France, and
most of europe do not consider patent about software as valid. They
definitely allow to deposit patents and to process patent violations
in court, just that this might be harder to do if applied to software. 
  Now the problem about the MP3 encoding is that it is patented
and as such is a big problem w.r.t. free software implementations.
I think Red Hat is just playing safe. In general if you want to add
MP3 support it is really simple, and raising awareness about the
danger of patents applying to software is anyway a good thing in 
my opinion. Nothing is worse than uneducated users or customers,
if there is a problem, it's better to point at it and educate them
if needed than hide the problem under the carpet and hope that
a disaster won't occur. Users are not lemmings and I honnestly 
dislike the trend to consider them as such, even more when it is
about open-soure and free software !

Daniel , speaking strictly for himself.

-- 
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