[PD] Use Linux and you will be sued

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, martin pichlmair wrote:

> well. i'm quite sure that an industry standard like mpeg4 (and any
> other legally used codec) is far more secure than an open source
> project as theora can be. why? because e.g. apple (the de-facto
> authors of big parts of the mpeg4 standard) can afford lawyers to
> check the situation, while we can't. and they do deals to protect
> their assets while we can't.

I would agree, but a company has another choice than affording
lawyers. They can settle right away, licensing the patent, and this has no
global positive effect, it only solves the problem for THEM. So if, for a
given patent, companies tend to settle, the opensource side is screwed.

> looks like a horrific future coming ...

Sort of like this:

  http://artengine.ca/matju/riaaswat.jpg

but grimmer. :-)

_____________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard -=- Montréal QC Canada -=- http://artengine.ca/matju