Re: XMMS and the new MP3 patent terms
>>>>> "W" == W Paul Mills <wpmills@Mills-USA.com> writes:
W> Are you saying even remove from non-free? Some of us have good reason
W> to use MP3 files from 3rd parties. For example:
W> http://www.banjonews.com/
If you look at the license of non-free software in the Debian archive and
read the copyright file of each of them, you can find that they allow the
binary code to be distributed in a Debian CD-ROM to be sold. They become
non-free because of things like source code not provided, commercial *use*
(rather than distribution) restrictions, disallowing changes to the code,
etc. This is not the case for MP3 code. And in fact, I do think that
patent encumbered things should be off from Debian once the patent holder
starts to do something "real" with the patent, given that patents is the
biggest threat to free software.
You will be able to use MP3 players. Given that the format is so popular,
somebody is going to setup a site so that you can add a source line to your
/etc/apt/sources.list to download MP3 players, even if Debian finally
decided to stop distributing them. It just makes life of CD producers
easier, by not forcing them to either pay Thomson or render their
distribution less competitive by pruning those software.
Regards,
Isaac.
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