On 2/27/08, Ananth Shrinivas <Ananth.Shrinivas at sun.com> wrote: > > >>>> If Russia is exempt to US patents, I would very much like BeleniX to > >>>> become Dazbog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazbog) ;-) > >>>> > >>>> > >>> I wonder if the law is based on where it is hosted or who is putting > >>> it up there. If a developer based in country_1 uses hosting services > >>> from country_2. Which law of the land would be applicable? Preferable > >>> to be safe than sorry. Need to check how ubuntu implements the > >>> restricted drivers in their repository without violating legal terms. > >>> > >> > >> AFAIK, they use Fluendo's codecs (for gstreamer atleast) which are > >> perfectly legal. > >> > >> http://www.fluendo.com/ > >> > > > > Not sure, but I think Shiv is referring to the NVIDIA or ATI > > accelerated graphics drivers, that come under the "Restricted drivers". > > > *That* is a completely different mess that arises out of GPL licensing, > binary blobs, "non-free" drivers and such which don't apply to > OpenSolaris because of the CDDL terms. NVidia (and soon ATI) drivers are > bundled with OpenSolaris even though they are binary blobs. > > What I was referring to here was mp3 patent royalties and codec > distribution concerns which are mitigated by using Fluendo's codecs. > > P.S: But in case of linux there is still a problem even with Fluendo > because applications linking to Gstreamer/Fluendo are GPL whereas > Gstreamer is LGPL and Fluendo is MIT. This makes Fluendo "non-free" and > hence it doesn't come bundled with distros even though it has no > patenting concerns. Did I say its a mad mad mad world ? ;-) > >
And all thats only for mp3. There are a whole bunch of other codecs like wma, divx, rm, etc that are not uncommon. Wonder if theres a way to legally provide one package (like hosting it in russia) so all the user has to do is hit a command like (wget .. | sh ..) and have the stuff installed. Anil
