[TriLUG] RH8 and Evolution Problem

[Greg Brown]

Even itty bitty Be OS payed out the $500,000.00 for mp3 licensing.  If 
Be OS can do it, Red Hat should have been able to as well.  I can 
understand Red Hat's position on the matter (to a degree) but I'm 
really left scratching my head over the end decision.

BTW, does Mandrake have the iptables and ipchains packages (or just 
iptables)?  Does Mandrake have a RPM-like function for updating the 
system?

Greg

On Saturday, Oct 5, 2002, at 23:53 America/New_York, Bill Vinson wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 11:00:58PM -0400, 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.
>>
>> Kevin,
>>
>> I must respectfully disagree with your above statement that
>> something has changed just for 8.0.  The slashdot story,
>> notwithstanding, Thompson Multimedia (or whatever the patent
>> owner's name is) has stated that *nothing whatsoever* has
>> changed in their patent stance.  Redhat's position just
>> seems like a lot of fear mongering.  But, you know what,
>> I'm actually slightly glad they did it because hopefully it
>> will drive people to try something else besides Redhat. :-)
>
> Actually, that is exactly the problem. Thompson said nothing in the
> license changed in their mind, but they have opened the door to charge
> all for profit companies that include mp3 decoding a license fee. What
> is interesting is they say it has always been this way.  So, be it.
> However, in Red Hat's defense, they have stopped including the decoding
> precisely b/c Thompson says they can charge the licensing fee and have
> always had that option. That is a scary thing for a company to know 
> that
> another can at any time come and demand .75 x #sold. It eats in to RH's
> margins and can cause them a great deal of hurt. By not including them
> now it makes it harder for Thompson to claim fees on previous versions
> sold with mp3 decoding as it shows good faith on RH's part in trying to
> adhere to the demands of the license and most courts I believe would
> recognize that.
>
> On another side, I think this bodes poorly as ogg is not a suitable
> replacement yet. I cannot hear that much of a diff between ogg and mp3
> and until hardware manufacturers (specifically in my mind, Apple's
> iTunes and iPod) support Ogg then it is useless to me. Also, I am 
> fairly
> certain that Apple is either paying the license fee or is prepared to
> pay it should it be necessary.
>
> Hopefully a good codec which is widely supported and free will arise 
> and
> maybe that is ogg, but for now I will stick with what is supported and
> with what works on my systems. I have already updated XMMS here under
> RH8 to support mp3 and this is not enough to make me ignore RH's other
> advantages for me over the likes of Mandrake...
>
> Bill
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