[XviD-devel] Re: License/legal discussions

[Tom Barry]

In practice it might just mean that you are allowed to distribute 
until the patent holder does something to stop you or manages to do 
something enough to make the copyright holder(s) complain.  Even the 
GPL does not really do anything without a complaint from the injured 
party (the Xvid developers).  That is, it does not just depend upon 
the terms of the open source license but how all the copyright 
owners choose to enforce it.

- Tom

Christoph Lampert wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, charact3r wrote:
> 
>>"[...] 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."
> 
> 
> I know that this can be read in different ways: Either, 
> you are allowed to distribute until a court stops you 
> (maybe being contacted by the patent holder would be enough),
> or, the public announcement that a license fee is needed for 
> distribution is already obligation enough. 
> I don't know what FSF says about this. I know e.g. that 
> may Linux distritbutions contain MP3 stuff, but RedHad stopped 
> inclusion of those a while ago. 
> Jan, have you lawyers told you anything on this? 
> 
> Still, the situation is stupid, and a license which essentially demands a
> software to be patent free is bad for an application like XviD.
> And, I still don't think this is related to commercial/noncommercial. 
> This is a general question of redistribution. 
> 
> Christoph
> 
> 
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