Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (317 mails)
| < Previous | Next > |
Re: [opensuse-project] Music distro
- From: Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:32:21 +0100
- Message-id: <20120123223221.GK19872@hera>
On 2012-01-23 23:13:59 (+0200), Stathis Iosifidis (aka diamond_gr)
<diamond_gr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]
It's not about licenses (copyright) at all: all the software
that is in Packman is under an open source license, mostly GPL.
Libraries and tools such as mad, lame, ffmpeg, mplayer, etc...,
are all under the GPL.
The issue is software patents.
Those are really two completely different things.
So while e.g. mad (an MP3 decoding library) may be used with
other software that is GPL, it may potentially not be shipped or
used in certain countries where software patents are seen as
valid, and are enforced. Most prominently, the USA.
In the EU, the current situation is still that software patents
are not seen as valid patents (patentability of algorithms,
etc...), but organizations such as music industry lobbies or
large software vendors from the USA and Japan keep trying to buy
politicians to change that.
In this particular case (mad), it potentially infringes patents
because the implementation is based on a public domain
implementation of the MP3 algorithms by Frauenhofer. The
Frauenhofer Institut as well as a few other groups (such as
Thompson) are part of a patent pool that wants to enforce their
patents, especially on MP3. Practically, that means that they
want everyone who uses or at least ships an MP3 algorithm
implementation (for encoding or decoding) to pay royalties to
them.
So, as you can see, it is a very different problem.
Essentially the reason Packman exists (but also because there
was no OBS nor facilities for third party package repositories a
long time ago when Packman was started -- remember that it
predates openSUSE by quite some years), as Packman is hosted in
Germany and, hence, in a region of the world where software
patents are (at least currently) not seen as valid by courts
and, hence, not enforced.
(They are granted by the EPO (European Patent Office) though,
which, unlike its name would like to suggest, is not an organism
of the EU... oh well, go figure, the bottom line is: it is
_very_ complex).
My personal opinion on this, which I believe is rather
qualified, is that it is *NOT* possible to build an openSUSE
spin with SUSE Studio that contains packages that potentially
infringe on software patents, for the simple reason that no
somewhat larger business would want to take the risk to host it
on its infrastructure (specifically, the risk of being sued for
distributing software that uses patented algorithms without
paying royalties for the right of using them).
If it was okay to have openSUSE spins that include such packages
on SUSE Studio, then it would also be okay to package those
packages on build.opensuse.org. And it isn't.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's accurate.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser
/\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green
_\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf
<diamond_gr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]
Regarding legal issues, SUSE Studio has a section that let's you add
a licence, right? We can use that.
It's not about licenses (copyright) at all: all the software
that is in Packman is under an open source license, mostly GPL.
Libraries and tools such as mad, lame, ffmpeg, mplayer, etc...,
are all under the GPL.
The issue is software patents.
Those are really two completely different things.
So while e.g. mad (an MP3 decoding library) may be used with
other software that is GPL, it may potentially not be shipped or
used in certain countries where software patents are seen as
valid, and are enforced. Most prominently, the USA.
In the EU, the current situation is still that software patents
are not seen as valid patents (patentability of algorithms,
etc...), but organizations such as music industry lobbies or
large software vendors from the USA and Japan keep trying to buy
politicians to change that.
In this particular case (mad), it potentially infringes patents
because the implementation is based on a public domain
implementation of the MP3 algorithms by Frauenhofer. The
Frauenhofer Institut as well as a few other groups (such as
Thompson) are part of a patent pool that wants to enforce their
patents, especially on MP3. Practically, that means that they
want everyone who uses or at least ships an MP3 algorithm
implementation (for encoding or decoding) to pay royalties to
them.
So, as you can see, it is a very different problem.
Essentially the reason Packman exists (but also because there
was no OBS nor facilities for third party package repositories a
long time ago when Packman was started -- remember that it
predates openSUSE by quite some years), as Packman is hosted in
Germany and, hence, in a region of the world where software
patents are (at least currently) not seen as valid by courts
and, hence, not enforced.
(They are granted by the EPO (European Patent Office) though,
which, unlike its name would like to suggest, is not an organism
of the EU... oh well, go figure, the bottom line is: it is
_very_ complex).
My personal opinion on this, which I believe is rather
qualified, is that it is *NOT* possible to build an openSUSE
spin with SUSE Studio that contains packages that potentially
infringe on software patents, for the simple reason that no
somewhat larger business would want to take the risk to host it
on its infrastructure (specifically, the risk of being sued for
distributing software that uses patented algorithms without
paying royalties for the right of using them).
If it was okay to have openSUSE spins that include such packages
on SUSE Studio, then it would also be okay to package those
packages on build.opensuse.org. And it isn't.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's accurate.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser
/\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green
_\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf
| < Previous | Next > |