Warren Togami <wtogami(a)redhat.com>:
Eric, you are completely divorced from reality if you truly think
this
is safe and prudent. You are essentially asking Red Hat to become a
martyr and destroy itself. Would that really be good for the community?
Negotiating an MP3 license with Fraunhofer (to give just one possible
example) would not constitute self-destruction.
What you advocate will not win this war in the long-run. These are
not
technical or community growth problems, but tough political and legal
issues that we cannot simply ignore because it would be convenient.
Funny you should say that. "Ignore this issue" is exactly the response
I seem to be seeing from most of the Fedora list.
The actions and resources Red Hat uses to fight software patents and
protect the future of FOSS is "corporate cowardice"?
No, but refusing to carry MP3 decoders when there is no patent block
on them is.
Whether there is such a patent block or not has been disputed. I
originally believed not, persons on this list have claimed there is,
the person who made the "corporate cowardice" accusation says they're
full of crap and suggests that I challenge them to produce a patent
number. I think he's making an unrealistic demand -- but it is a fact
that SUSe carries encoders. If SUSe can do it, why not Red Hat or
Fedora?
Red Hat engages in substantive actions to fight software patents.
Do you?
Yes, as a matter of fact. I invented the basic logic of the
reciprocal patent-termination clauses now used in several open-source
licenses. And it's partly because of my jawboning that IBM opened up
a patent pool.
--
<a
href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>