multimedia licensing

kwhiskers kwhiskers at gmail.com
Mon Apr 18 15:44:01 UTC 2005


If this is the case, then this development seems dangerous for Linux' 
long-term existence. Eventually, all countries will pass similar 
legislation: Russia might join the EU; China is already becoming the world's 
largest and most powerful industrial producer of consumer goods (albeit 
likely also the world's largest bootlegger). What then?

It seems to me, the sensible thing is to legeslate open standards and open 
file formats, to allow user portability, transparency, etc. But how to 
convince companies that their software should store data in a format that is 
100% readable by a competitor's program? Or worse, an OS that is vastly 
superior to anything one can buy... and FREE?

And that brings up another thought: will Linux remain free for the future? 
Already, there are vultures hawking isos burnt to CD and some distros that 
offer 'premium' versions for pay. Is it only a matter of time before Linux 
becomes the next Windows, where the consumer must pay an annual update fee 
in order to stay on top of the innovations?

On 4/18/05, Joel Jaeggli <joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, kwhiskers wrote:
> 
> > So are you guys saying that this new/proposed (?) patent legislation in
> > Europa will force other distros to remove vital components from the 
> standard
> > distibutions as well?
> 
> There is the potential for that yes.
> 
>
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