[arch-general] Drop non-free ?! (Was: Commit in ffmpeg/trunk)

[Yaro Kasear]

On Saturday, May 07, 2011 22:46:29 Jonathan Beatty wrote:
> On 05/07/2011 12:33 PM, Yaro Kasear wrote:
> > and most Linux users don't give a damn if something is
> > "nonfree."
> 
> That's precisely part of the problem. You are walking blindly into
> patent traps and the destruction of a mutually beneficial community just
> for the sake of convenience.
> 
> Have fun with that.
> 
> Jonathan

Well, don't mistake "patented" for "patent poisoned." I haven't seen much of a 
case for ffmpeg being in "patent trap" territory. I personally believe 
software patents are evil, but I'm hardly going to let Stallmanist politics 
stop me from getting a functional desktop.

It's your kind of thinking that motivates the GPLv3, and it's your kind of 
thinking that's the reason the GPLv3 is so unpopular.

That said, I do tend to avoid things like Mono which are much closer to 
"patent trap" territory than ffmpeg. I also favor things like Ogg over MP3 or 
AVI. Largely also because I find things made in Mono are tripe and that Ogg 
Vorbis sounds better than MP3 and Theora is more fantastic than AVI.

A little common sense is required here. Even in the unlikely event anyone's 
actually ever going to sue over faac, it's not even going to target end users. 
Such lawsuits rarely do. Secondly, if it does, all it results in is a fork 
that removes the patented parts. That's the "magic" of FOSS. Patents can't 
really kill it.

Knowing this, I'd rather we don't drop a well-supported feature of ffmpeg just 
because some people think there *might* be a patent problem. 99.9% of patents 
that encompass FOSS projects are ignored by the patent holders, even if they 
know that the patents are "infringed." Largely because the patent holders know 
we're not exploiting their patents for our gain.

That remaining 0.1% are the kind of entities that want to see things like 
Linux dead and buried because it threatens their bottom line. It's not about 
royalties so much as it's about bullying the competition.

I'm serious, though. If we worry about "questionable patents" like you are we 
may as well chuck the majority of the packages in [core], [extra], and 
[community] into the AUR, because I promise they will ALL touch in some way on 
some patent somewhere, largely because patents, especially in the US, are 
handed out like candy.

So, rather than succumb to fear of patents and making the majority of the 
packages in Arch useless, leave them how they are and let the vocal minority 
who honestly thinks we'd get sued over faac use the abs to build a custom 
ffmpeg package that has no faac support.

In a nutshell: Quit crippling my distribution just because you're scared of 
patents just because Richard Stallman told you to be.