Just a reminder of what is being asked here

Posted Aug 19, 2006 3:23 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: Just a reminder of what is being asked here by Erich_J_Ritzmann
Parent article: Linuxs iPod Generation Gap (Red Herring)

> The issue many have taken against MP3 deals with a German patent holder, who as far as I know, has never used their IP ownership to defend against MP3 player implementations. Yet, Red Hat/Fedora has removed the player from their stock distribution -- that, as I understand it, is the key point.

If you're so certain that you won't get sued, start a distribution (maybe even based on Fedora) that distributes all that. I'm sure ESR will be glad to help ;-)

> And when it comes to the issue of encoders, I note that I have yet to pay the patent holder any royalties for using the MP3 encoder on OS X.

Whoever distributed the software to you pays.

> Some have suggested in this thread that a patent would prevent open source software.

That would be me. It sure does. If I make an MP3 player piece of software and distribute it to you, I have to obtain a patent licence for that. This patent licence covers me. If I distribute this software to you under an open source licence, in theory you should be able to redistribute that software. However, you can't, because you don't have the patent licence. Meaning, each recipient of such "open source" software would have to obtain a separate licence in order to distribute. This is no longer open source.

These issues have been discussed at length on various mailing lists. There is simply no way around this except if patent holder issues an explicit licence that covers open source distribution. For example, IBM did that with their RCU patent. Otherwise, such software is not suitable for inclusion in distributions that are attempting to remain 100% open source (or free software, if you wish).