Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Law Compliance Cannot Be Voted

This isn't the end-all-be-all statement the authors think it is.

Law compliance can be voted, a community can absolutely decide not to follow a law and do illegal stuff with their software. Of course, then they get shut down by the legal system and the entire community faces consequences up to possibly jail, including the maintainers who didn't agree to the decision...

but this is not Fedora definitively breaking a law which will hurt the maintainers. This is Fedora fighting against a patent troll which will cause a big legal hassle and then back off.

I imagine the devs just don't want to pay for lawyers or don't have the funds, because you know, open source doesn't generate revenue. That is what they should've said: "we are doing this because the alternative is getting sued and we don't want to pay for a lawyer? Do you (the community) want to pay for a lawyer?" Maybe some think this message is rude but I like it, it actually puts this situation in the hands of the community.

>faces consequences up to possibly jail

When did software patents become a criminal matter ? The issue exists entirely because Fedora is inextricably tied to RedHat. Also, I would hope that at the very least, if you do not know enough about it, at least don't fear monger. This type of language is not much better than "you wouldn't download a car."

It depends on the jurisdiction. Patent infringement can be a criminal matter in Germany, for example. As far as I can see, this may also apply to non-commercial activity. (Not that there are many sustained activities conducted over the Internet German courts would consider non-commercial, a profit motive is usual not required.)

> Patent infringement can be a criminal matter in Germany, for example.

Can you link to anything related to this?

§142 PatG https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?a=142&g=PatG

English translation: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_patg/englisch_pa...

Patents aren't special in this regard in Germany. Copyright violations, trademark violations, and unauthorized disclosure of trade secrets are criminalized as well. So at least it's consistent.

You can remove the patented code path or you can get sued and remove the code path after paying a lot of money.

Patent trolls lose a notorious fraction of the cases that are brought to court. They make up for it by being cheaper than going to court.

Depends on which jurisdiction you're in, no?

Fedora is in the US (and it isn't easy for them to just leave).

> Of course, then they get shut down by the legal system and the entire community faces consequences up to possibly jail

Or potentially nothing happens because in these cases the law in question is often US law and not everyone is subject to US jurisdiction.

>This is Fedora fighting against a patent troll which will cause a big legal hassle and then back off.

For a patent troll sure, but what makes you think Fedora will win for a codec that from its inception has been explicitly nonfree?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com