On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Jarod Wilson <jarod@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No, but I am assuming they know which codecs are included in a minimal build of the libraries, and which codecs are known to be covered by patents/licensing agreements.
Debian has an extremely capable legal team who have many years of experience dealing with these matters. If something is cleared for inclusion in debian, you can pretty much assume it is legally OK.
I am perfectly willing to talk to anyone with legal expertise in these matters. I am just making the point that until you have seen an actual patent which ffmpeg supposedly violates, making statements like "ffmpeg violates patents !" is FUD.
(For the record, for example, I would not advise any distros to include Mono, since I have seen actual US patents which it supposedly violates.)
In the meantime, perhaps you could include LiVES in fedora, since as I have pointed out, ffmpeg/mplayer/mencoder are *not* required for either building or running the application. LiVES will check at runtime if any of these are available so users who wish to use "restricted" codecs can either build mplayer from source or pull it from another distro.
Regards,
Salsaman.
On Tue, Jun 01, 2010 at 12:11:19PM -0300, salsaman wrote:
> Please answer the question. I have been personally assured byAre these mplayer developers legal experts in patent law?
> representatives of the mplayer developers that the ffmpeg code contains *no
> patented code*.
No, but I am assuming they know which codecs are included in a minimal build of the libraries, and which codecs are known to be covered by patents/licensing agreements.
> I spent over two years fighting to convince the debianAgain, Debian doesn't have the same level of exposure as a distribution
> developers that this was true, until they finally accepted it.
with a corporate backer in the US -- i.e. Red Hat. Red Hat legal has
already made a call on this. They would have to clear any change in stance
with respect to ffmpeg and the like.
Debian has an extremely capable legal team who have many years of experience dealing with these matters. If something is cleared for inclusion in debian, you can pretty much assume it is legally OK.
> I am very tired of this discussion, and I am not prepared to go through itIf you're not willing to talk to someone with legal expertise about a
> all again with the fedora legal dept.
>
> Please just point me to just one registered patent that the core of ffmpeg
> is known to violate.
> Otherwise you are just spreading FUD.
legal matter, then you're not going to get anywhere here. Sorry.
I am perfectly willing to talk to anyone with legal expertise in these matters. I am just making the point that until you have seen an actual patent which ffmpeg supposedly violates, making statements like "ffmpeg violates patents !" is FUD.
(For the record, for example, I would not advise any distros to include Mono, since I have seen actual US patents which it supposedly violates.)
In the meantime, perhaps you could include LiVES in fedora, since as I have pointed out, ffmpeg/mplayer/mencoder are *not* required for either building or running the application. LiVES will check at runtime if any of these are available so users who wish to use "restricted" codecs can either build mplayer from source or pull it from another distro.
Regards,
Salsaman.
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