Looking at Haiku again after it has been a while, when I try to install various applications from HaikuDepot, it is including the x265 and x264 packages as dependencies even for things like office suites.
As I am in the USA and cannot legally use those packages without a license which you do not appear to have obtained, I would become a criminal for installing even a word processor and spreadsheet that you are distributing.
Yes, the laws here are stupid, but they are still the laws that we must abide by.
Please provide an option to prevent those packages from being included/required for those of us who are in the various countries were these cannot be used. This is an unnecessary hindrance to using Haiku.
It is an open-source project. People are free to work on whatever they want and the fact this subject has not been addressed is a good indication of the community’s interest in it.
In the spirit open-source projects, feel free to come with a technical solution, and start implementing it. If you get things rolling, other members of the community may even start assisting you.
Idiocy abounds…if the laws, here in the USA, are too restrictive, then simply avoid them. Take out everything and anything that is patented. Period. Use patent-less alternatives or let users download patented content by themselves and leave Haiku free of this encumbered mess. .MP3’s are nice, but I can easily use .FLAC or other alternative. JPEGs are nice, but I can easily (and prefer) .PNGs. As a society, we should simply be using tools to convert a medium from a patented format to an unpatented one. Patents are a means to lock others out, to keep profit purely to one’s self for a specific duration. It’s selfishness. And all selfishness is unbefitting to mankind, as a whole. Why can we not see past Ferengi motives, hmm? We Humaaaans are not meant to be so greedy. Now give me my 20 bars of gold-pressed Latinum and rub my lobes!
Anyhow haikuports is not haiku. If this is such an issue for US users I suggest somebody who is in that jurisdiction and is knowledgeable tackles this. as a EU user and developer I simply don’t care to “fix” this as it is a non-issue. And I certainly won’t support vanning everything that could be patented out of fear of a US law.
Wait… WHAT? A patent-less tool that converts a file from a patented file format to an unpatented one… violates the patent of the file format? ARRRRGH! Utter ridiculousness! Well, if nothing else, maybe by the time anyone notices, everything will have been converted over and they’ll never be able to figure out who did what (or when) and we’ll all be free of this patent nonsense!
only if someone actually has a valid patent. The way this works is several people and organizations claim they have patents, there is ahuge list of patents, most of which are likely invalid because there is prior art, or end up not being relevant to the specific implementation. But, it’s cheaper to pay the fee they ask for, than to do the research and find proof of the patents invalidity/unapplicability.
Do you have a specific patent that we may be infringing?
