On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 03:20:12AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 11:43:27AM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 09:47:22PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > > > > AFAIK there is no public evidence that Red Hat's (which is who I assume > > > you're principally referring to) decision not to ship mp3-playing software > > > is grounded in concerns about actively enforced patents. > > > FWIW, I've discussed this with a Red Hat employee at last year's > > LinuxTag. The reason they stay away from multimedia stuff is that they > > are afraid of being sued over patent infringement. They currently have > > a lot of money in the bank, which makes them an interesting target. > > Yes, the more assets a company has, the more paranoid they become about > protecting them. "Fear of being sued over patent infringement" doesn't > imply a belief that any particular patent is valid, or that any particular > piece of software is infringing -- it merely implies a belief that a certain > class of software is, as a whole, more likely to lead to pesky, expensive > lawsuits. And lawsuits are almost always pesky and expensive, regardless of > their validity.
100% agreed. Often lawsuits are settled just to get rid of the hassle at a cost that is lower than the pain that going through the lawsuit would imply... Ironically Debian in this case is in the fortunate situation of having near-empty pockets that are unlikely to incite somebody to sue just to get a share of it. Diego -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]