John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
On Thu, 2007-03-01 at 18:55 +0000, Zvi Devir wrote:
Sorry for jumping ahead, but this something I really don't understand.
Let's assume that there are currently a few valid US patents on JPEG,
MJPEG (There are probably more) as well as for MPEG4.2 (xvid divx wmv1
and many more are MPEG4 part 2 implementations). My question is, so
what? A patent is a territorial legal being -- it is valid only where it
was granted. Even if JPEG is covered by hundreds of active US patents,
and some unenforceable EU patents, it has nothing to do with countries
in which the OLPCs will be distributed, since those patents are invalid
there.
That is a good way to sabotage a project. I'll leave the legal stuff up
to our lawyers but taking a who cares attitude does not solve the issue.
Countries can do what they want, which is why we are using the gstreamer
framework. If they feel that mp3 or mpeg or whatever is legal to put on
the machines they can do it but we are not going to ship with patent
encumbered formats which could put some countries in awkward positions.
That is not a decision we can make for the people receiving the laptops.
BTW Jpeg is obviously ok to use since I have yet to see a distro pull it
out. Not sure about MJpeg.
The jpeg patents expired some time last year. Mjpeg should be patent
free as it is simply a sequence of jpegs (which was pointed out already).
Gabriel.
http://lives.sourceforge.net
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