Re: [Gnash] gstreamer plugin

[Daniel James]

Hi John,

> MP3 will be free software compatible as soon as those patents
> expire.

That assumes that other patent holders don't emerge with a claim at some 
point in the future. If people go down the MP3 Pro route, there may well 
be fresh patents too.

> The long-term
> solution will be to do whatever we want, less than 20 years from now.

I'm not sure I can wait that long :-) Given what we know about the 
'intellectual property' industry, I'm expecting to see a big push to 
replace MP3 by the time those original patents expire.

> We should determine the earliest date on which
> a non-patent-encumbered MP3 decoder could be made.  With that
> information in hand, Gnash (and other projects) can make a much better
> decision about how we support MP3.

I agree, it's information that we need to be aware of.

> Therefore, people who derive revenue from selling or using our
> software are expected to pay for a patent license.  People who derive
> no revenue from distributing or using our software are NOT expected to
> pay for a patent license.

That's the implication, but in practice almost everything has a 
commercial aspect at some point. Sourceforge doesn't make any money, but 
it's clearly owned by a commercial company.

> Red Hat
> and other commercial Linux distributors are commercial distributors,
> too, and would have to pay for the patents.

That's one of the reasons why Red Hat doesn't do a multimedia 
workstation product, despite Red Hat's distro being deployed in 
Hollywood studios for some time.

> But Debian, which doesn't charge money for distributions, nor sell
> ads, would not have to pay.

That's the belief of many Debian advocates, but as one person on 
debian-legal put it, who is prepared to put up the money to defend a 
patent lawsuit against the Debian project? No hands were raised :-)

> Fedora, similarly.

You'd have to be kidding. Fedora is wholly controlled by Red Hat, a 
company with $1 billion in cash.

> FSF, similarly, would
> not have to pay.

Patent holders don't care if you've distributed 'their' intellectual 
property for free - you still could face a claim for retrospective 
patent licence fees.

> Potential GPL incompatability
> because of patents differs from potential GPL incompatability related
> to copyrights, for example.

Sure, but section 7 of the GPL is very clear on this:

"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."

> And in GPL3, which is in development, a lot
> of work is going into expanding GPL compatibility.

There's not a snowball's chance in hell that RMS will make GPL3 more 
patent-compatible.

> > But then you'd be infringing the GPL, because the patent licence almost 
> > certainly won't be GPL compatible.

> That's apparently not true.

I think the Gstreamer people are being over-optimistic here. The GPL 
uses the phrases 'conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, 
agreement or otherwise)' and 'any other pertinent obligations'. This 
means to me that an actual lawsuit is not required, since taking out a 
patent licence falls under 'agreement or otherwise' and is certainly a 
'pertinent obligation' if you live in a country where software patents 
are enforced by law.

Cheers!

Daniel