Re: GNOME-media on the road to 2.4.0

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    I guess when
    the times comes Red Hat, Ximian , Sun and so on just have to decide
    wether the GPL 'evolution the movie player' isn't violating its own
    license by being distributed with Quicktime movie playing capabilities.

I think the FSF had better study this question now.  It depends
on details of how the "Quicktime movie playing capabilities" communicate
with Evolution.  Can you tell me more?

Another issue, even more important, is that we need to make sure that
the version of Evolution we recommend doesn't talk about the non-free
Quicktime player.  Regardless of whether it violates the GPL, it is
non-free software.  We must not recommend its use.

    > Of course "nonus" is looking less and less likely to be accurate, the
    > EU appears to be on the verge of adopting software patents.
    True, however I hope that the EU will no be accepting people to patent
    stuff already out there

If the EU adopts software patents, it is almost certain that existing
US software patents will be transferred to Europe.  However, there remain
other countries that don't have software patents.