Re: Personal analysis about thread/flame/discussion/project/GR/removing-non-free/...
On Sun, Jun 11, 2000 at 01:13:17PM +0200, Christian Surchi wrote:
> People spent more resources for these threads/flames than for non-free.
>
> Generating flames in -devel is too easy, discussing concretely in
> -project is a miracle.
>
> Removing non-free is trivial, doing something useful for people is more
> difficult. Building non-free alternatives to most used application is a
> real proposal.
Okay, please show me one free mp3 player.
Hint: xmms, alsaplayer, freeamp, etc, are not free: they are
miscategorized by their maintainers, as they are using patented
techniques which are controlled and licensed by Thomson Multimedia.
They may be "free for personal use when provided at zero cost", but
selling them or using them in a commercial setting is a violation of
Thomson's license terms.
See http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mp3-licensing-faq.pdf for the terms and
conditions on software mp3 players.
You're probably as likely to be sued for violating the patents as you
are for violating the IDEA patents, but "probably won't be sued" is not
sufficient for classifying stuff as free, especially when the patent
violates the DFSG with a discriminatory usage policy.
--
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