Brainstorming for UDS-P

[Scott Kitterman]

Rodney Dawes <rodney.dawes at canonical.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 2011-10-12 at 04:44 -0400, Martin Owens wrote:
>> On Tue, 2011-10-11 at 09:39 -0400, Rodney Dawes wrote:
>> > The Fluendo plug-in is the only fully legal MP3 codec
>implementation
>> > there is to use. 
>> 
>> You don't know that for sure Dobey, libmad has never gone to court
>and
>> it's status is a guess. Perhaps a very good guess, but a guess just
>the
>> same. Of course if we took the same actions for other free software
>with
>> patent issues we'd also mark the linux kernel as non-free and kick
>that
>> out too. *inconsistent*
>
>Given that libmad is GPL and has not paid license fees to implement the
>MP3 codec, it is not legal. Whether or not you disagree with the
>validity of patents or not is irrelevant. Under the current laws, the
>Fluendo implementation is currently the only legal one in countries
>where patents hold any weight in the legal system. Let's not turn this
>thread into an argument about patent issues.

Fine, but independent of this specific instance "patented" is not the standard relevant for Ubuntu. No non-trivial software is not affected by patents, so Ubuntu only worries about actively enforced patents.

Scott K