On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 02:57:45PM +0200, Thomas Lübking wrote: > MPEG2 (until 2018), mp3 (until 2017) and h264 (until farfaraway) are still > patented. The patents are largely unchallenged (no prior art claims) and > valid by US laws (while most of the rest of the world considers the idea to > patent math or algorithms ridiculous)
I don't see how this is relevant, VLC doesn't include this code. The various decoding algorithms are implemented in libraries that optional modules for VLC can link against. Plasma uses more patented methods than VLC itself, I can start listing up relevant patents if anyone is interested. And this isn't just Plasma, though, many free software projects in and outside of KDE use patented methods, and some of those patents are held by people that don't seem mind using legal actions to enforce their patents. And this is why I think what RedHat does is bad; not only are they limiting what we feel we can do, but what do we do the day RedHat refuses to ship Plasma because of some vague statements from their legal department? > On top of that, there're legal worries about libdvdcss and libaacs, which > are considered illegal by (far too) many laws across the planet (as they > break *cough* "effective" *cough* copyright protection systems - LOL) libdvdcss and libaacs are not a part of VLC either. That said, I have not looked extensively into this, so feel free to point out if anything is wrong. -- Martin Sandsmark >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<
