Hi,
MythTV http://mythtv.org is an example of a great free software project. It converts your GNU/Linux box into a wonderful personal video recorder. An australian company is using this software to sell a PVR based on that software. See http://www.d1.com.au/hmc/index.html According to: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/25/2222240&mode=thread&tid=... they seem to adhere to the GPL by also putting all the source on the device.
I think there might be some problem though. MythTV and libraries like FFMPEG use all kind of patents. And non-royalty free patents and the GPL are pretty incompatible if you read the GPL:
"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program."
So the people of D1 should get a patent license for all the patents they infringe, but to adhere to the GPL they need not only to get a patent license for their customers but also for all the people who obtain that code via redistribution. Since this can be a sheer amount of people, they basically have to get a patent license for an almost unlimited number of people. It's very unlikely that patent holders will license their patents in such a way. Unless you pay them a gazillion euros of course.
Another thing somebody could do, is buy 1 box of D1 and then copy the software to sell his own boxes. If a patent holder then knocks on his door, he just says he got his code under the GPL from D1 and that they should go and bother D1 about patent licenses.
Also something strange is the following text on the FFMPEG website http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/
"Commercial use of FFMPEG: Few people has asked about using FFMPEG usage in commercial (closed source) applications. While you can definately use FFMPEG for those purposes (don't forget to follow the LGPL license), you still need to contact the MPEG-LA or other patent holders in order to license the patents which covers the various codecs you want to use. Most of the Patent holders know about FFMPEG and they follow the development, and so far none of them sued or asked to remove any code, but that doesn't mean you don't need to pay them if you're using this code commercially."
Non-royalty free patents and the GPL just seem uncompatible to me or am I missing something??
Any comments/thoughts??
Pete
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