GStreamer's MP3 for Linux: Thanks, but no thanks. [LWN.net]

GStreamer's MP3 for Linux: Thanks, but no thanks.

Posted Jan 2, 2006 22:29 UTC (Mon) by spot (subscriber, #15640)
In reply to: GStreamer's MP3 for Linux: Thanks, but no thanks. by elanthis
Parent article: GStreamer's MP3 for Linux

There are distribution restrictions, and Fedora would have to ship a binary without matching source code. This is ignoring the legal issues raised in the above comment. Of course, IANAL, so the Fedora Foundation legal team might think its all fine and dandy (but I seriously doubt it).

I'm not convinced that the Fluendo plugin is legal in a Fedora distribution without Fedora (re: Red Hat) paying for the patent license from Thomson, since Fluendo doesn't have the ability to "resell" the patent license.

This is also a slippery slope in that it tells Thomson that their practice of collecting royalties on software patents is ok. It opens the door to all sorts of binary components going into the distribution, because they "work"... and then we're no better than Windows.

I know that this sucks for end-users, but we can either sweep this under the rug, or stand for open source principles.

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GStreamer's MP3 for Linux: Thanks, but no thanks.

Posted Jan 3, 2006 15:23 UTC (Tue) by Uraeus (subscriber, #33755) [Link]

To clarify something in regards to our abilility to 'resell' our patent license. We have the ability to let our business partners redistribute our plugin with their products. So anyone who signs a contract with us can freely redistribute our plugin with their own products. The 'reselling' part you are mentioning is that we of course can't give everyone the same right we have, meaning that people could sign a contract with us, then have other people sign contracts with them and so on. Everyone have to either sign a contract with us to distribute our plugin, or get a contract with Thomson/Fruenhoffer to distribute their own plugin (which they could build from the source we provide).

Christian Schaller