Hello. I am interested in using Fedora in both work and home office
environments. Is Fedora structured in such a way as to abide by US
software patent laws, making it safe for work in the US? I've mainly
used a couple other Linux distributions. In both cases, I found it
very difficult to determine whether or not the distro included
software (such as multimedia codecs) which were illegal to use in the
United States. Since I am interested in using Linux at work, I would
like some kind of assurance that at the very least a fresh install is
free of patent-infringing software. In the past, I've worked with
other distros that made the task of reaching out and grabbing whatever
codec was needed (regardless of it's legality) almost automatic, which
is nearly the opposite situation I'm looking for. I figured since
Fedora is backed by Red Hat, a US company, perhaps the project's
approach would be a bit more acceptable for the complicated patent law
situation in this country.
I saw this page, which was
informative:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Software_Patents. Yet, the
disclaimer made it clear this was not necessarily Fedora's official
stance on these matters, so I was compelled to write an email. Thanks
for any help and/or clarification.
Jeremy (jhargis1012(a)yahoo.com)