On Wednesday 03 December 2008, Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org> wrote about 'Re: Debian Project News - December 2nd, 2008': >On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 10:29:08AM +0100, Johannes Wiedersich <johannes@physik.blm.tu-muenchen.de> was heard to say: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: >> > sense. I wonder why they were dropped from Debian, is it not able to >> > participate in some of the Fluendo stuff or something else? >> >> They were most likely dropped because 'Debian is 100% free software' >> and some of these multimedia packages are not 100% free. In Debian's >> definition of free software 'free' includes 'free from patents'. > > AIUI, it's not so much that these are considered non-free as that we >can't safely distribute them, either because of their own license or >because of patent claims by some third party. If they were simply >not 100% free, they wouldn't be part of Debian main but we could still >distribute them from non-free. (IANAFM) The Fluendo mp3 codec is MIT licensed, so it's good on copyrights. As far as patents go, distribution "rights" are available without cost or obligation from Fluendo, just have to have a signed contact on file with them. I understand that's not free enough for main, but it sounds like SPI could sign a contract so we could throw it into non-free. I don't know why I keep responding to this thread. If I had to destroy all the media I have that won't play with Debian main, I'd probably be better for it. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss03@volumehost.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.org/ \_/
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