On Sunday 01 June 2008 04:15:12 Stefan Potyra wrote: > hm... if only patent issues are a problem, I'd like to know what patents > can actually cover. If patents only limit usage, but not distribution, I > see no problems with putting mplayer sources in universe, and building > binary mencoder packages in multiverse. Can someone clarify this?
A quick check with apt-cache shows the following mplayer bd to be in multiverse (because of mencoder): em8300-headers libfaac-dev liblame-dev libx264-dev libxvidcore4-dev I have not checked them all in detail, but I have the impression they are in multiverse because they (directly or through bd/d) either contain microcode/firmware or use patented algorithms (at least patented in some countries). What these patents (or claimed patents) cover or not is a very good question for which I could not find an easy and clear answer, at least from this example for MP3 (see Licensing and patent issues): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 If a source in universe can bd on multiverse and have binaries in multiverse then yes, the easy solution would be to just have mencoder in multiverse. If not I don't see how to possibly solve this beside: 1) following Debian by disabling mencoder, which doesn't seem to be wished by seeing posts in this thread and reactions on IRC 2) having two different source packages (which, quite frankly, doesn't seem feasible from a maintenability pov). Cesare -- Ubuntu-motu mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu
