Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Chris Rosewarne]

Redhat as a US company can not distribute code that infringes on US 
patents as this would leave them open to huge lawsuits. They also cannot 
even link to information or packages on how to install this code, as 
this could be interpreted as 'contributory infringement' and also leave 
them open to lawsuits. If Redhat left themselves open to this 
possibility they would rightly be crucified by their shareholders.

Now Mark may have deep pockets and have slipped under the radar so far, 
but it is a really risky and irresponsible strategy, especially as a lot 
of newcomers using his distribution may be left high and dry.

-Chris
> Message: 13
> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:30:03 -0430
> From: "Patrick O'Callaghan" <pocallaghan at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves
> To: For users of Fedora <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <1208908803.10350.8.camel at bree.homelinux.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 16:36 -0700, Francis Earl wrote:
>   
>> It has everything to do with legalities, as the source code for the
>> encoders/decoders is available.
>>     
>
> Fair point. However the precise nature of the difference between Fedora
> and Ubuntu in legal terms is not entirely clear to me. On both systems
> the user can install propietary codecs, and on both systems there are
> clear warnings that this is "at your own risk" and the proprietary stuff
> is not installed by default. The practical difference from the user's
> point of view is that Ubuntu tells you how to get it and Fedora doesn't
> (the fact that Ubuntu actually hosts some of it is to my mind a red
> herring; they could just as easily provide pointers to 3rd-party sites
> if they were worried about keeping legal distance, so apparently they
> aren't worried about it).
>
> It may also be relevant that Red Hat is a US company, and Canonical
> isn't, and that US law allows software patents, and many other countries
> don't (yet), but IANAL of course.
>
> poc
>
>