[Ldsoss] DVD Player Software

[Dan Hanks]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, Steven H. McCown wrote:

> Okay, that makes sense.  So, how does Linux get away with including a DVD
> player and still providing the source?  Even if it is built outside the US,
> some of the distro companies (e.g., Novell) are within the US.  Presumably
> they would be under the same rules.

As I understand it, the player is included with the distro, but not the 
library used to decode the DVD. You can use the player to watch unencoded 
DVDs. Same story for MP3 players. Fedora Core provides the XMMS media 
player, but not the library to decode MP3 files.

-- Dan