[TriLUG] RH8 and Evolution Problem

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On 5 Oct 2002, Tanner Lovelace wrote:

> On Sat, 2002-10-05 at 16:58, Kevin Sonney wrote:
> 
> > Then take it up with the lawyers. There are PATENT ISSUES with mp3
> > decoder inclusion. On distros prior to 8.0, the owner of said
> > patent didn't have an issue, and there's no clear statement that a
> > commercially released GNU/Linux Distro won't be forced to pay $.75 per
> > decoder shipped.

For once, its important to remember, its not all about the money.
Including a pay-per-decoder piece within a GPL program is a violation of 
the GPL (section 2b). So even if Red Hat had wanted to pay, we couldn't 
have put it in noatun, xmms, mpg321, without being in violation of the 
GPL. And thats important to Red Hat.

If you're willing to put aside the GPL, there are lots of other 
distributions who are more than willing to cast it aside in the name of 
profit.

(IANAL)

~spot
---
Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> Red Hat Sales Engineer
Sair Linux and GNU Certified Administrator (LCA)
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
GPG: D786 8B22 D9DB 1F8B 4AB7  448E 3C5E 99AD 9305 4260

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