I'm not sure if I've followed this thread 100% accurately, but I'm pretty sure the issue with the codecs here is in patent licensing. None of your cited GPL examples have patent licenses to tangle with. The sentence did not mean patenting open source code, but rather purchasing a patent license for the codecs that VLC already has and having it apply to the code, which would be required to do what you were asking.
William Yang > -----Original Message----- > From: desktop-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:desktop-discuss- > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Anon Y Mous > Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 7:51 PM > To: desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org > Subject: Re: [desktop-discuss] licensed codecs available > > > It becomes more complex than that, if Sun were to take a patent license > on such GPL'd (VLC) > > code and then sell the product the next person would not be able to pass > along those GPL > > "freedoms" which would be in violation of the GPL.... > > You are reading way too much into what I'm saying. I never said Sun should > patent any open source projects. I just said they should add branding, > support and codecs to a media player and sell it to Solaris users (such as > myself) to make a little quick cash. > > It is 100% perfectly legal to SELL people products that are based on > GPL'ed code. Red Hat Linux bases their entire business model on selling > people binary distributions of GPL'ed code and if Red Hat can sell people > a branded version of Linux called "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" that is > really not all that much different from CentOS other than it has pictures > of little red hats on it, then Sun could sell people a branded version of > an open source media player if they wanted to. Sun has already released a > branded version of GNOME called "Java Desktop System", so why not a > branded version of VLC called "Java Media Player". Makes perfect sense to > me. > > Richard Stallman said himself that there is nothing wrong with selling > someone a binary product distribution made out of bundled up GPL'ed code. > The only restriction with the GPL is that Sun would have to give the > source code any changes they made to the GPL project back to the community, > and in my experience Sun should have no problem with doing this as they > are historically one of the #1 contributors of open source code (in terms > of sheer quantity of code shared with the community). If you look at how > much code Sun has shared, they are up there with other top contributors > such as the Regents of UC Berkeley and GNU / FSF. > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > desktop-discuss mailing list > desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org
