On 03/11/2007, Aniruddha <mailing_list@orange.nl> wrote:
I know the link. Apparently according to this article it's not an legal but an ethical issue.
No, it's a legal issue as well. Using patent & copyright infringing things is never really an issue. Distribution of infringing software most certainly is an issue. Knowing distribution of something like xine mp3 support by an american company would be in violation of the mp3 patent, would make them liable. Furthermore the GPL does not grant permission to distribute software that is encumbered from distribution by patents unless you can extend the patent protection to all potential distributees, and their distributees etc. So it would be in violation of both patent licence making Novell liable to the patent holders, and potentially to the software authors. Similar problems exist for other software, e.g. the nvidia driver is non-gpl, yet is a derived work of the kernel which is GPL. Distribution the driver in a form linked against the kernel is in violation of the GPL, and violates the kernel developer's copyright. However, the GPL only applies restrictions to distribution, not to usage. And in almost all the world software patents are not an issue. So it's ok for users to use these restricted formats, but not OK for Novell to distribute them. -- Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+help@opensuse.org