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Re: x11amp

On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 10:14:38PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:

> > I don't see why we ought to let some lawyers trying to make a good bluff
> > scare us.
> 
> Fraunhofer institute holds the patent, we shouldn't take any chances.

The fact that they hold *a* patent does not put Debian in any sort of
jeopardy.  If anything, it would be the authors; Debian is complying with
GPL completely.

> They have already treathened to sue or sued several people who used
> their encoder engine - let's hope that they won't get to the decoders.

Threatened.  Not sued.  I have yet to see any evidence that they have a
patent applicable to decoders.

> Debian has been very paranoid to the vague licencing terms of some
> progs in the past, from what I've seen.

The licensing terms are not vague: it's GPL.  That's about as solid as you
can get.

> But that is not the reason why my first guess was non-free. It was
> the fact that mpg123 is in non-free, and x11amp is (according to
> the docs) based on it.

mpg123 is in non-free because of its license.  I did not find any
documentation anywhere that indicated that x11amp uses any mpg123 code. 
(Where are you looking?)  Since it's released as GPL, it's free.
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