On Tuesday 18 Aug 2009, steve wrote: > [snip] > The reason Fedora doesn't support another distro, or for that matter > non-US repos with mp3 support, is less to do with legal restrictions > (of which there are some[1]) and more to do with the principle of the > matter. > > They /too/ are opposed to the principle of software patents. They do > not want to become hypocrites by opposing it on one hand and then > just make it easy for anyone to ignore the matter by themselves > providing an way to do so. > > More here: > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/MP3
Afarid I'm going to be nitpicking here, but we really need a formal opinion on whether use of MP3 is illegal in India or not. The Fedora page says, ``The MP3 patents are protected by United States law and international treaties, and the Fedora Project will honor the applicable laws and treaties.''. However there is no treaty that enforces US software patents in India to the best of my knowledge. Of course, the fact that India does not have software patents at all could have something to do with that :) Further, if you see where MP3 is patented, it works out to a rather small list of 18-20 countries. Should 90% of the countries in the world be penalised because 10% have taken an ill-considered step towards restricting their citizens' rights? I doubt if any reasonable person could agree to those terms! No more on this topic from my side (unless a troll pops up, of course ;) Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur [email protected] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
