Even itty bitty Be OS payed out the $500,000.00 for mp3 licensing. If Be OS can do it, Red Hat should have been able to as well. I can understand Red Hat's position on the matter (to a degree) but I'm really left scratching my head over the end decision.
BTW, does Mandrake have the iptables and ipchains packages (or just iptables)? Does Mandrake have a RPM-like function for updating the system? Greg On Saturday, Oct 5, 2002, at 23:53 America/New_York, Bill Vinson wrote: > On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 11:00:58PM -0400, Tanner Lovelace wrote: >> On Sat, 2002-10-05 at 16:58, Kevin Sonney wrote: >> >>> Then take it up with the lawyers. There are PATENT ISSUES with mp3 >>> decoder inclusion. On distros prior to 8.0, the owner of said >>> patent didn't have an issue, and there's no clear statement that a >>> commercially released GNU/Linux Distro won't be forced to pay $.75 >>> per >>> decoder shipped. >> >> Kevin, >> >> I must respectfully disagree with your above statement that >> something has changed just for 8.0. The slashdot story, >> notwithstanding, Thompson Multimedia (or whatever the patent >> owner's name is) has stated that *nothing whatsoever* has >> changed in their patent stance. Redhat's position just >> seems like a lot of fear mongering. But, you know what, >> I'm actually slightly glad they did it because hopefully it >> will drive people to try something else besides Redhat. :-) > > Actually, that is exactly the problem. Thompson said nothing in the > license changed in their mind, but they have opened the door to charge > all for profit companies that include mp3 decoding a license fee. What > is interesting is they say it has always been this way. So, be it. > However, in Red Hat's defense, they have stopped including the decoding > precisely b/c Thompson says they can charge the licensing fee and have > always had that option. That is a scary thing for a company to know > that > another can at any time come and demand .75 x #sold. It eats in to RH's > margins and can cause them a great deal of hurt. By not including them > now it makes it harder for Thompson to claim fees on previous versions > sold with mp3 decoding as it shows good faith on RH's part in trying to > adhere to the demands of the license and most courts I believe would > recognize that. > > On another side, I think this bodes poorly as ogg is not a suitable > replacement yet. I cannot hear that much of a diff between ogg and mp3 > and until hardware manufacturers (specifically in my mind, Apple's > iTunes and iPod) support Ogg then it is useless to me. Also, I am > fairly > certain that Apple is either paying the license fee or is prepared to > pay it should it be necessary. > > Hopefully a good codec which is widely supported and free will arise > and > maybe that is ogg, but for now I will stick with what is supported and > with what works on my systems. I have already updated XMMS here under > RH8 to support mp3 and this is not enough to make me ignore RH's other > advantages for me over the likes of Mandrake... > > Bill > _______________________________________________ > TriLUG mailing list > http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug > TriLUG Organizational FAQ: > http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html > _______________________________________________ TriLUG mailing list http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ: http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
