During our last openSUSE Project meeting, there was a discussion on Multimedia Codecs. Currently, in openSUSE (and in almost all other Linux distributions) multimedia codecs are not shipped along with the DVD, because:
* The software is proprietary software, it does not conform to the Open Source definition.
* The software is providing functionality which is patented and the patent holder is preventing distribution of the software
* The software violates laws concerning software distribution in jurisdictions where the companies behind the distribution conduct business.
However, Legal restrictions differs across countries for different multimedia formats. There are places where there are no legal restrictions on some formats.
We can run a server/service on such a country where there are no legal restrictions multimedia codecs (or on international waters ?) which when given a Country name, should respond with the List of allowed multimedia codecs for that country (and also the binaries).
During installation, users are asked to choose their Location (timezone etc.) and after every installation, on the first run, we can pass this location information to the above mentioned Geo-Codecs-Service and get all the safe-to-use-binaries for the selected location.
This Geo-Codecs-Service can be jointly operated by all linux distributions (or for that matter can be used by any interested operating system).
So, the question of this blog post is: Are there any legal problems with this above approach ? I am sure someone should have considered this earlier and should have found any reasons why this may not be possible. Please type your comments here. Thank you a lot for your suggestions. Also, thanks to Karl Fischer for making me blog this and get a wider opinion.