Redhat as a US company can not distribute code that infringes on US
patents as this would leave them open to huge lawsuits. They also cannot
even link to information or packages on how to install this code, as
this could be interpreted as 'contributory infringement' and also leave
them open to lawsuits. If Redhat left themselves open to this
possibility they would rightly be crucified by their shareholders.
Now Mark may have deep pockets and have slipped under the radar so far,
but it is a really risky and irresponsible strategy, especially as a lot
of newcomers using his distribution may be left high and dry.
-Chris
Message: 13
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:30:03 -0430
From: "Patrick O'Callaghan" <pocallaghan@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves
To: For users of Fedora <fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <1208908803.10350.8.camel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain
On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 16:36 -0700, Francis Earl wrote:
It has everything to do with legalities, as the source code for the
encoders/decoders is available.
Fair point. However the precise nature of the difference between Fedora
and Ubuntu in legal terms is not entirely clear to me. On both systems
the user can install propietary codecs, and on both systems there are
clear warnings that this is "at your own risk" and the proprietary stuff
is not installed by default. The practical difference from the user's
point of view is that Ubuntu tells you how to get it and Fedora doesn't
(the fact that Ubuntu actually hosts some of it is to my mind a red
herring; they could just as easily provide pointers to 3rd-party sites
if they were worried about keeping legal distance, so apparently they
aren't worried about it).
It may also be relevant that Red Hat is a US company, and Canonical
isn't, and that US law allows software patents, and many other countries
don't (yet), but IANAL of course.
poc
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