A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux
https://www.xda-developers.com/25-year-old-brazilian-video-patent-expired-legal-headache-linux/
318 pointsbytheanonymousone•10日前•179 コメント
I'm also thinking about the click wheel; I got one of my kids a knockoff iPod for Christmas last year.
Can other e-commerce sites legally "one-click" to purchase like Amazon now?!?
edit: I am talking about divx web player
Yes, if you care about the DVD-era still. If not, this expiry doesn't have a big impact on anything.
Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv
Problem solved.
> a lot less feasible for Linux distributions designed to be freely downloaded and redistributed.
> [...] spent some time enabling third-party repositories to get multimedia codecs, you already know what it's like
Well, this was quite easy on debian, but I abandoned being a slave to distributions. I compile from source as-is, using a set of ruby scripts (primarily), not unlike homebrew, but based on YAML rather than ruby classes 1:1 (this YAML dataset is expanded into variables that fully describe how a program is installed, what it installs, and so forth, so any other programming language can also evaluate the same dataset here; I just wrote the first implementation via ruby as such, but I can add support for other languages easily, or someone else can, it is open by design).
What the article describes really is, at worst, a problem for some distribution. But even there it was never any problem to have support for multimedia, unless the distribution sucks. Many distributions suck, but many other distributions are also excellent. Arch is IMO much better than debian, by default. In fact, both debian and the rpm-based distributions, are usually quite retarded by default. Arch, Gentoo and many more, even oldschool slackware, are much saner by default. I have no idea why retarded distributions became so dominant, probably because they were very easy to get going (see ubuntu). But quite frankly, the article really blows this all out of proportion. Enabling support for codecs is easy, even on most of the retarded distributions.
I don't see video patent being a problem though really. The real test step for linux will be the upcoming mandatory age sniffing. People already looked with deep worry at systemd running ahead and supporting age sniffing (see https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954). Now the legislation is slowly changing to force everyone to give up their age. Microsoft will push next here, via Windows. You heard this here first.
Age sniffing will come - the lobbyists were all already paid to force this. The big commercial distributions will go force and ID its users.
I dispute "very much". It came out in 2004 and almost all the patents are gone.