Re: Software patents are bad (Was: [Advocate Play Ogg] Correction to the PlayOgg page)

[xiando]

> > 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.

Please try to be more precise and specific when you talk about software patents.

Some software is in violation of software patents in the few countries who allow sotware patents. This is why some globally distributed GNU/Linux distributions avoid shipping them by default while very localized distributions here in the EU always include software which can be patented in tyrannical parts of the world without being patentable locally.

It is true that "it seems fairly clear that under the current legal regime no free software player can legally play MP3s" IN SOME PARTS of the world (while it is clear that any software player, free or non-free, can legally play MP3s in this part of the world).

The reason it is so vital to make this clear is to remind people in those parts of the world where there are no software patents that software patents is something which needs to be continiously defended against.

It is also important to keep this in mind when you look at software projects who you may think infridges patents, many developers don't since there are none who apply to them - even though those poor people in the US who download and use their software really do infridges (local) patents.

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