On Wed, 28 Mar 2012, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
Each one of us is free to *think* that a piece of software in the Debian archive is "patent encumbered", whatever that means, and possibly thinking so due to the legitimate interests of patent owners that want *everybody* to think pieces of software are encumbered by their own patents (it is like asking the restaurant owner if the food is good, right?).
But the policy refers to knowingly violating patents. Are you claiming that "knowingly" refers only to cases where lawyers have told us this? Most people wouldn't interpret it that way. And that then means anyone can post to the list saying "by the way, MP3 is covered by patents" and Debian is now "knowingly" violating the patent (after all, we were just told about it, so now we know it) and must delete everything that handles MP3.