2009/3/17 Bryn M. Reeves <bmr@xxxxxxxxxx>: > On Tue, 2009-03-17 at 14:48 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote: >> Alan Cox wrote: >> > Please remember Wackipedia is often simply the collected urban >> > legends, misunderstandings and general cluelessness of its contributors. >> > What Wackipedia has to say and what the actual situation (reviewed by >> > people competent to give legal opinions) is are often quite different. >> >> Well, the Wikipedia article gives references claiming the last relevant >> patent expired in 2003. So the OP's question sounds legitimate to me, and >> this is probably worth a review by RH Legal. > > The problem is a bit deeper than that I believe. Even though some parts > of the standards are no longer covered by outstanding patents I'm not > aware of implementations that neatly separate things out so that you can > easily pick the patent-encumbered from the non-patent-encumbered. > > For e.g., I'm not aware of a widely used MPEG audio implementation that > implements only layers 1 and 2 (patents expired) but not layer 3 > (patents outstanding) (yes, I know about tooLAME but it is nothing like > as widely used as equivalents that include layer 3 support). > > Given the amount of work it could take to re-organise everything around > this and the relatively limited amount of media most users will > encounter that is encoded in straight mpeg1-video with mpeg1 layer-1/2 > audio I'm not sure the effort is justified. > Well, mpeg1 might not be a high priority by itself, but it would be useful to be able to pull in codecs as patents expire. -- imalone -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
