Daniel James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > GPL section 7 refers to "any other pertinent obligations", and I'd say > that for a business operating in the USA or Europe, the patent system > does create very pertinent obligations. [...]
Please can you explain why you believe any European patents cover this software as such? MP3 decoding is basically reversing the time/frequency transform and reassembling the frames, while mathematical algorithms are specifically unpatentable in England. Maybe the European Patent Office have granted a patent on a machine that does this, but debian does not make such a machine, as far as I know. Unfortunately, if debian can be used to create such a machine and pro-patenters win out, that patent may cause problems for everyone in Europe. Ultimately, if this is troublesome for you, it's not too hard to rebuild this package. Debian probably contains other things to worry you, because there isn't a near-infinite legal staff working the near-infinite number of hours to check every line of code for possibly-applicable patents and negotiate them away. Worrying about all of these could paralyse Debian because it's horribly uncertain. If you obtain independent legal opinion that you can share with us, it would probably help. MP3 decoding is necessary to support conversion to better formats like Ogg Vorbis. XMMS can help convert with its diskwriter plugin. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not sure of the US situation. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
