On 10.01.2012 15:07, Pascal Terjan wrote: > On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 03:20, Anssi Hannula <[email protected]> wrote: >> The problem is that that "balance" was achieved by sticking packages in >> PLF/main/contrib semi-randomly. For example, H.264 decoders and MPEG-4 >> video encoders are in main/core, while e.g. AAC audio decoders are in >> PLF/tainted. If one'd put them into an order, IMO H.264 and MPEG-4 would >> be much more prominent and tainted candidates instead of AAC decoding... >> Also, in e.g. MPEG-4 case we have encoders both in core and in tainted, >> e.g. we have ffmpeg in core, but xvid in tainted. > > I agree we need rules, but "being covered with patents" does not make > sense, as the patent owner may agree with using it in free software. > I think something like "No actively enforced patent" in core would be good.
Possibly, but how do you define that, exactly? Does a licensing program count as "enforcing" or do you mean something else? >>> I suppose you can't blame a >>> US company like RedHat for being overly paranoid, but as you said, Mandriva >>> hasn't had any problems. Are there any there examples out of >>> there of distros trying to achieve this balance? Obviously we don't want >>> to follow Ubuntu or ROSA in pretending patents don't exist. >> >> Linux Mint provides a "No codecs" CD: >> http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php >> >> Ubuntu has a patent policy (which basically IIRC says "rights owner or >> packager, please contact us if you think there is an infringement, we >> will investgate"): >> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PatentPolicy >> >> Note also that the Ubuntu Live CD and therefore the default Ubuntu >> installation do not contain any codecs. By default Totem is installed, >> however, and gstreamer is plugged into "gnome-codec-install" (which >> seems really nice, do we use it?), so that wen you try to play an >> unsupported video the first time, it will prompt to install the codecs >> (it will also show a warning dialog about patents etc, but AFAICS this >> comes from gnome-codec-install itself, not Ubuntu). > > This looks nice > -- Anssi Hannula
