Warren Togami <wtogami@xxxxxxxxxx>: > Eric, you are completely divorced from reality if you truly think this > is safe and prudent. You are essentially asking Red Hat to become a > martyr and destroy itself. Would that really be good for the community? Negotiating an MP3 license with Fraunhofer (to give just one possible example) would not constitute self-destruction. > What you advocate will not win this war in the long-run. These are not > technical or community growth problems, but tough political and legal > issues that we cannot simply ignore because it would be convenient. Funny you should say that. "Ignore this issue" is exactly the response I seem to be seeing from most of the Fedora list. > The actions and resources Red Hat uses to fight software patents and > protect the future of FOSS is "corporate cowardice"? No, but refusing to carry MP3 decoders when there is no patent block on them is. Whether there is such a patent block or not has been disputed. I originally believed not, persons on this list have claimed there is, the person who made the "corporate cowardice" accusation says they're full of crap and suggests that I challenge them to produce a patent number. I think he's making an unrealistic demand -- but it is a fact that SUSe carries encoders. If SUSe can do it, why not Red Hat or Fedora? > Red Hat engages in substantive actions to fight software patents. > > Do you? Yes, as a matter of fact. I invented the basic logic of the reciprocal patent-termination clauses now used in several open-source licenses. And it's partly because of my jawboning that IBM opened up a patent pool. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a> -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
