On Saturday 31 August 2002 02:02 pm, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
Eric Pouech wrote:
my point is:
- a company X has an audio player for Win32
- company X ports its app to Wine using the wine source, and it's mp3
player and makes a closed package of it
- it'll have to pay for the license
so I think this has to be documented somehow
A+
Isn't it always the case with Open Source software that, when you want to repackage a piece of code, patent licensing requirements are yours to figure out and comply? Why is this case any different than the Unisys LZW patent, when free (bear) implementations were free of charge?
Well, yes, but it should probably be disclosed somewhere in the readme and/or the license file. You don't want people to encounter this after they've ported and released stuff, right? Wine is not legally OBLIGATED to find patent dependencies, but I think that developers should make an effort to document known/possible patent issues. It's not that hard, just put a notice in the documentation somewhere.
Note: I am not a lawyer, so this is just my opinion and not legal advice.