[MPlayer-dev-eng] FFII software patent demo, politics, KiSS

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> [2004-04-19 15:56:33 +0200]:

<snip>
> > It could be done, but
> >  - someone will have to maintain it
> 
> In what regard?  New patents coming up?  I think this would only
> affect new formats.  The FSF promised us help with research if we
> wanted to do something like this.  I'd guess they would be willing to
> help us with updates when new formats come into common usage.

I dont think its worth to do any patent research for that particular
job (of course FSF is welcomed to do patent research and feed our
patent database @ffii.org). Patent research does NOT guarantee to find 
all patents, and in the current world you can be sure that almost every
useful concept is patented somewhere, even mail archiving is.

We can be quite sure that every codec and most of the rest of mplayer
is somewhere conflicting with some patent. Most times one patent is
enough to make the whole software illegal.

So the best way seems to always warn that risk is high to be criminal
when using or distributing the code.
(printing it out on the console should be enough)

> >  - I'd consider disabling it by default when (if) the patent mess is
> >  over for good
> 
> Don't get your hopes up.  Even if we manage to prevent them in the EU,
> they're not going away in the states anytime soon.

Well, there's (little) hope, that the situations becomes a slightly 
better in the US, since many courts have understood the problems of
trivial patents. But of course the problem itself remains unsolved.


cu
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