On Sun, 2022-10-02 at 11:45 +0200, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
Le 02/10/2022 à 11:09, Stephan Hemeier a écrit :
PS : its the policy of openSUSE (and other distros) not to enable codecs with patents on it.
If you think really hard about this, then everybody should move right away to Trisquel Linux, a 100% free & libre distribution. Because who wants a working system, as long as we stick to the FSF's recommendations?
You do understand the difference between proprietary but free (as in beer) versus software with licensing fees required, right? For example, NVidia drivers are the former kind whereas Adobe PhotoShop is the latter kind. As it turns out (to my best understand and IANAL), H.264 codecs are the latter kind as well, i.e. you cannot be allowed to ship libraries that allow encoding and decoding H.264 without paying a recurring licensing fee to MPEG-LA. And no, that most distros were not complying with said licensing is not an excuse to continue doing the same.
Gentle reminder: a distribution's purpose is to make things easier for users. Or at least not unnecessarily hard.
And to definitely do nothing illegal. I am simply trying to throw some light on the issue, that's all. Have a nice day. -- Atri