patents

[Chanchao]

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 13:15 +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote:

> > so it seems that legal action over the MP3 format is not a practical
> > problem for open-source distributions and users.

> There might be. Does Ubuntu qualify as non-commercial use? There is a 
> company behind it that makes money from it.

Indeed.. Though if Ubuntu/Canonical wants to remain on the cautious side
they could do a consumer version and a business-user version that
doesn't include the mp3 stuff, just like now.  

mp3 really is the biggie, this is one that users EXPECT.  The issue with
Java is going away because the j2re thingy mostly works and is getting
better, and very windows-specific formats such as wma/wmv, while useful,
users wouldn't expect out of the box. 

mpeg-2 is another one that would be very useful, but still not as
completely essential as mp3. :)

Another essential one is viewing a website, getting a message saying
'this site uses flash, do you want to download the plugin' and being
able to click the button and having it actually work. :)

> There might also be a philosophical side to the problem.

Yes: "Should humanity have music?" :)

(Not that I want to go there in this discussion , but mp3 has become the
de-facto standard for digital music, so I stress this point by talking
about 'having music' or not.  Ogg, schmogg, whatever, that's not what
people by and large use, currently, and likely for years to come.)

Cheers,
Chanchao