Here are some of my ideas for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9

[Les Mikesell]

Steve Searle wrote:
> 
>>    What is unlawful about VLC? If your expressing the Microsoft 
>> position I don't think it would stand up in court.
> 
> I understand In some juristictions (probably the US amongst others) some
> of the codec algorithms normally included in vlc cannot be legally used
> without the payment of royalties to the patent holders. 


I think there would be an interesting legal argument that nearly all 
potential users have already paid the relevant patent royalties 
indirectly in the form of drivers and other software provided by the 
hardware vendors of the devices in question (and included in the cost), 
or in the copy of Windows they were essentially forced to buy with the 
computer.  Since they have paid to use the covered algorithms and since 
patents cover the process not specific instances, they should be 
permitted to use a version of it that actually works.  Of course I don't 
want to spend my own money to test this argument...

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com