Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Rahul Sundaram]

Antonio Olivares wrote:

> http://www.linux.com/articles/57849?theme=print
> 
> Although you can pay for a copy of it or you can also
> download it for free.  I just hope that they do not
> get sued.  

Probably won't. It is a matter of how much money you lose in filing 
charges vs how much you hope to gain in the end. Suing a single 
individual with no commercial entity behind it is just not worth it.

> Is it "bad", or illegal if one person installs wine on
> Fedora and then download the windows version of vlc to
> play mp3's?  This person is not using the third party
> repos.  But now he/she can play mp3's.  Is there
> anything illegal by doing that?

I suspect you don't understand how software patents work. Software 
patents don't cover merely implementation (that would be copyright) but 
give a exclusive and monopoly right to the patent holder over the 
application of the ideas itself.

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/007may05/features/ip/

VLC in Windows is just the same as the Linux version from this 
perspective. Neither of them come with any software patent license. If 
they do, they won't be free in the first place.

> Can this person get sued?

Can? Sure depending on whether he is a citizen of a country that 
enforces software patents but individuals are very unlikely to get sued 
for patent damages. Commercial entities are the usual target for the 
reason I explained above.

Rahul