Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Antonio Olivares]

--- Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> Antonio Olivares wrote:
> 
> > http://www.linux.com/articles/57849?theme=print
> > 
> > Although you can pay for a copy of it or you can
> also
> > download it for free.  I just hope that they do
> not
> > get sued.  
> 
> Probably won't. It is a matter of how much money you
> lose in filing 
> charges vs how much you hope to gain in the end.
> Suing a single 
> individual with no commercial entity behind it is
> just not worth it.
> 
> > Is it "bad", or illegal if one person installs
> wine on
> > Fedora and then download the windows version of
> vlc to
> > play mp3's?  This person is not using the third
> party
> > repos.  But now he/she can play mp3's.  Is there
> > anything illegal by doing that?
> 
> I suspect you don't understand how software patents
> work. Software 
> patents don't cover merely implementation (that
> would be copyright) but 
> give a exclusive and monopoly right to the patent
> holder over the 
> application of the ideas itself.
>
Who is the patent holder in this case?
I have two links on one of my pages

http://www20.brinkster.com/olivares/

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/

I understand up to a certain point.  But apparently
there are too many patent owners and it will be hard
to keep up who has the upper hand in this issue.  

Suppose a musician records a disc.  He/she recorded
that disc with a record company the record company is
the one that holds the key to the success of the
company.  If the artist wanted to put the music on the
net for free downloading, the record company would
refuse to abide by the artists intentions.  

Who holds the patent to the disc, the creator, or the
company?  
> 
> http://www.redhat.com/magazine/007may05/features/ip/
> 
> VLC in Windows is just the same as the Linux version
> from this 
> perspective. Neither of them come with any software
> patent license. If 
> they do, they won't be free in the first place.
>
But do you see my point, Take Windows XP on a computer
with a DVD drive.  The machine cannot play DVD's even
though Microsoft has most things covered.  To do so
you would need a copy of WinDVD/PowerDVD or other
software to view DVDs.  Instead of doing this, I
encouraged students that wanted to view DVDs on a
computer lab to download VLC.  They did and now they
can view DVDs and listen to ogg files where they could
not before using the default Window Media player.  

Does not Microsoft have they lead here?  They cannot
play a DVD by default?  

Being in the US, which enforces the many laws that
might/might not make sense whenever it feels to or big
groups pressuring it to do so, is the strongest reason
why the Forbidden Items do not get included in Fedora.
 You and others have pointed this out.  

Commercial entities are the usual target for the 
reason I explained above.  Since Fedora is sponsored
by Red Hat, they cannot take a chance at getting sued.
 That is why many things cannot be included.  I agree
with many things, but I do not know why many people
say that many of these things are free.  

Regards,

Antonio 

> 
> 
> > Can this person get sued?
> 
> Can? Sure depending on whether he is a citizen of a
> country that 
> enforces software patents but individuals are very
> unlikely to get sued 
> for patent damages. Commercial entities are the
> usual target for the 
> reason I explained above.
> 
> Rahul
> 
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