Fedora - DELL ?

[Andy Green]

Les Mikesell wrote:

>> I betcha Dell has a CFO too. And, I bet they don't ship something with
>> mp3 playback loaded and ready to use in it, as shipped. Wait and see
>> what happens. :) Ric
> 
> Did you happen to not notice that virtually every Dell currently shipped 
> has mp3 playback loaded - also WMA and most would have dvd too.  It's 
> Linux that brings a problem into this picture.

No.  It is patent law that brings that problem into the picture.

While it is protected by law (and all the penalties the state can apply) 
then the patented content in proprietary codecs give proprietary 
software a reason to go on.  You are ragging on the wrong people if you 
think that is Linux or Fedora's fault.  The problem is patent law.

In 2010 IIRC Linux will have zero problem with MP3 playback out of the 
box, because the Frauenhofer patent will have expired [1].  But it will 
continue to have problems playing back $RANDOM_CURRENT_CONTENT because 
it will be encoded in some new patented format that neither expired nor 
appears in Linspire's catalogue.  You can probably play it anyway thanks 
to mplayer, but that's not the point.

-Andy

[1] Consult your lawyer about random other patent creatures that might 
cost you $1.5bn