Dapper installation notes/Stuff that needs fixing

[Santiago Roza]

On 2/15/06, Dane Mutters <dmutters at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just out of
> curiosity, does anybody know where Mplayer/Xine/XMMS/w32codecs, etc. are NOT
> legal?


the players are not illegal per se... what's illegal in some countries
is their implementation of patented standards (mp3, mpeg2/dvd,
mpeg4/divx), without paying the corresponding royalties.

those countries are the ones that recognise software patents;
basically usa and japan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues

in the case of w32codecs and libdvdcss2, what's also illegal (under
the american dmca) is the reverse engineering of the formats... not to
mention the fact that w32codecs include a bunch of copyrighted
quicktime/wm/divx dlls haxored together  :S


there are no easy solutions, because the legal issue is tricky (and
risky).  the ones i can think of are:
- making a parallel non-us version of ubuntu, with all the patented stuff.
- including the patented stuff in ubuntu, but install it only if the
user claims not to be in the us or any other country with software
patents.
- including a post-install wizard that downloads and installs all that
stuff, if the user claims the same thing as before.


but again, there's no easy solution.


--
Santiago Roza
Departamento I+D - Thymbra
santiago.roza at thymbra.com