Re: [Advocate Play Ogg] Correction to the PlayOgg page

[Matthew Flaschen]

Gabriele 'LightKnight' Stilli wrote:
> I'm not entirely sure that this is so. VLC, Audacious, MPlayer, mpg321,
> XMMS, are free software players (most of them licensed under "GPLv2 or
> later") that can reproduce MP3s (and for sure there are many others).

They are in violation of the MP3 patents, which is why many
distributions avoid shipping them by default.  Of course, it's
questionable whether they actually infringe, whether the MP3 patents are
valid, etc., but it seems fairly clear that under the current legal
regime no free software player can legally play MP3s.

> I don't know how they stand patent-wise and if they actually did pay the
> requested royalties.

They did not, and probably would not actually be /able/ to, because
royalties are often per-copy, and it is impossible to track the number
of copies of free software.

> For the "GPL prevents that" part, this may only be true for the GPLv3,
> since GPLv2 doesn't talk about patents at all. Here, too, I would like
> some clarifications about this.

Actually, GPLv2 says, "For example, if a patent license would not permit
royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive
copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could
satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from
distribution of the Program."

That means I can't get a MP3 patent license for my fork of VLC, then
distribute it, unless the patent license it applies to /all/ downstream
recipients.

This prevents division of the community's freedoms.

Matt Flaschen