On Tuesday 26 October 2004 1:28 am, Chadley Wilson wrote:
I heard from a local linux developer who is building his own distro, that if any linux distro just signs an agreement, just like microsoft did, with Sony that ensures that they will not try reverse engineering the software and that the user must accept a license agreement for the software then they are allowed to include support it in the distro. This is because Sony hold the patents to DVD encryption. I could be wrong and would like to know the truth of the matter.
I don't think this is true simply because I know S.u.S.E. does bundle software that requires users to agree to licensing issues (support for my notebook's Lucent winmodem). Since SuSE has already done this with other manufacturers I don't think it's a simple matter of getting users to agree to licensing issues - I think it's probably a DMCA issue. Cheers