Re: RFS: packagekit
Praveen A <pravi.a@gmail.com> writes:
> I was reading through the wiki and found this,
> * Debian does not include software that is encumbered by software patents.
> This statement is correct for Fedora, but we have many *known* patent
> encumbered software in our repos like mp3 codec, ffmpeg etc. So I
> think, this item can be removed.
It depends on what you mean by "encumbered." I'm quite sure that Fedora
contains software covered by patents for which there is no public license.
It's almost impossible to have software systems that aren't covered by
some patent, probably unenforcable.
I believe Debian and Fedora use essentially the same policy: we don't
include software with a patent that we think is likely to be enforced on
either Debian or our users. Where that line gets drawn tends to vary a
lot depending on a wide variety of factors, including legal advice.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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