Re: MP3 decoders' non-freeness
At 09:42 PM 8/6/02 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 03:02:59AM -0500, David Starner wrote:
> The amount of money to be got from a unknowing non-commercial
> infringer is also pretty limited.
The issue isn't how badly we can be hurt.
Part of the issue is how badly someone wants to hurt us.
> Distributing large amounts of software that we didn't write, and that
> we don't have a large body of software patents to trade on, inherently
> opens us up to lawsuits.
Only in the same sense that breathing can open you up to lawsuits.
Did you look at the link? We have distributed many packages with code
we had no right to distribute. Even when it comes down to stuff like
libgtk, we have no proof that someone wasn't cribbing from another
graphics library, possibly a highly proprietary one, and that the
copyright owners weren't going to jump down our throats.
wanted to spend the time learning about the
issues involved enough to talk to lawyers about ensuring that it was
done in such a way that wasn't directly or indirectly violating US laws,
we might be able to one day have such a place.
What's up with the whole talking with lawyers thing? It certainly didn't
stop us from moving LZW to non-free and RSA to non-US in the past.
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