patents

[Bry Melvin]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Chanchao<mailto:custom at freenet.de> 
  To: Ubuntu Help and User Discussions<mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 8:04 PM
  Subject: Re: patents


  On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 13:15 +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote:

  > > so it seems that legal action over the MP3 format is not a practical
  > > problem for open-source distributions and users.

  > There might be. Does Ubuntu qualify as non-commercial use? There is a 
  > company behind it that makes money from it.

  Indeed.. Though if Ubuntu/Canonical wants to remain on the cautious side
  they could do a consumer version and a business-user version that
  doesn't include the mp3 stuff, just like now.  

  mp3 really is the biggie, this is one that users EXPECT.  The issue with
  Java is going away because the j2re thingy mostly works and is getting
  better, and very windows-specific formats such as wma/wmv, while useful,
  users wouldn't expect out of the box. 

  SNIP

  by talking
  about 'having music' or not.  Ogg, schmogg, whatever, that's not what
  people by and large use, currently, and likely for years to come.)

  Cheers,
  Chanchao


  -- 
I agree that Movies MP3 etc are definitely needed to see Linux popular on a Consumer desktop.

I think we'll see more business desktop first, hopefully the apps will mature to do so.

The answer to the patented items like MP3 isn't going to come from within the open source commuity though I don't think.

What we'll probably see is companies like NERO who are now testing the waters will come out with "Nero Burning ROM Linux" which includes the needed codecs etc, royalties paid, in a linux installable package. It will probably NOT be  a debian format however.  But I can see where some commercial distros like Linspire may make it happen. FWIW there's been talk about Linspire making their click and run service available for Ubuntu for a fee. Something like this is probably the best solution for the near future. I DO know Linspire does have licensing for at least some of the restricted formats. Of course they don't send the CDs out for free either.

Bryann
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