Re: mplayer / divx

[Walter Landry <landry@physics.utah.edu>]

> On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 10:48:14PM -0700, Joseph Carter wrote:
> > So far nobody's making a big deal about the patents on the DivX encoding,
> > but that could change.  Debian has an unwritten and unevenly enforced
> > policy of rejecting software implementing a patent or placing it into
> > non-free regardless of its license.  But for patents that are not very
> > well-known or the holder is not being antagonistic, you can probably get
> > the software into main.
> 
> mmmkay, well, could I put mplayer (with or without CSS decryption) in
> non-free? That's basically what I'm looking for. I usually boycott the
> entire non-free section but when something makes it there because of
> bullshit patents that I can safely ignore, that doesn't actually make
> it non-free (the copyright holders aren't imposing anything that
> removes your freedom).

The patent restrictions keep you from distributing it at all.  If it
can't go into main because of patents, it can't go into non-free
(unless the patent holder has some wierd license allowing
non-commercial use or such).  That is one of the many reasons why
patents suck for free software.  Non-us is a different story, since
the patent might not be valid outside of the US.  However, I think
Debian policy is to discourage the use of non-us for that purpose,
since it was only really supposed to be for crypto stuff.

Regards,
Walter Landry
landry@physics.utah.edu