Re: No mention of "patents" in DFSG
2007/10/14, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop>:
> It would be very good if you looked for the facts before making a song
> and dance about it all being FUD. Cases like LZW are famous!
Sorry, I don't mean to offend, but those "facts" are not so obvious,
especially for some of the packages that are important to me.
Thanks though for your detailed unraveling of this specific case, this
was exactly what I was looking for and it would be nice if such a
report could be attached to any package bug that led to the packages
removal.
So now I will list some stuff that I found in bugs.debian.org
----------8<-----------
x264:
Debian Bug report logs - #423250
RM: x264 -- RoFTPM; patent issues
Explaination: Now - it contains mpeg4 stuff, try
googling for "mpeg4 patent" once and you know why it needs to go out.
----------8<-----------
Very precise.
And then there are things like faac and lame, where there is a lot of
talking and stuff going on, but no complete, easy to find
documentation of why they are not in debian.
And since this software is important for a lot of interoperability and
compatibility with software and hardware "in the wild", I think that
this is not to be taken lightly. Unlimited interoperability has always
been and will continue to be an important aspect of FLOSS.
Cheers
-Richard
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