> Mandrake currently ships several things that walk the fine line of > licensing. Perfect example of this is the mp3 decoders included in the > distribution. It is unclear if Mandrake should have to pay royalties on > every CD it ships (though I think free downloads it is clear that they > would not). Yet, mp3 decoders are shipped in main. It may seems unclear, but you look at http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html, you see you must pay 0.75 $ per unit, for a decoder. The links was given by the website of the Fraunhofer institute.
You can see they have patents in a lot of country, including Germany, Danemark, USA and France. Of course, Mandrake should not pay, as they are not the developer, but, i don't think that the authors of zinf, and xmms have paid... If these software are illegal, is it safe to keep them in main ? Mick
