 Permalink for comment 423161 Why not sell a US "retail"
version??? by MacMan on Fri 7th May 2010 14:45 UTC Member since:
As I understand it, software patents ARE ONLY VALID IN THE US.
Thus, all this h.264 patent nonsense only affects those of us
here in the US who are unlucky enough to have a government (both
parties) bought and paid for multi-national corporations.  So,
anyone living in the rest of the world is free to use the h.264
codec. Also, h.264 is open source, there are countless open
source h.264 encoders (Handbrake ROCKS!!!!) and decoders.  Also,
as I understand it, if Canonical sells a copy in the US with the
h.264 license, they only pay MPEG-LA for each copy sold, so if
they only sell one copy, they only pay what 10 cents or
something.  So why don't they sell a physical retail copy for
the US market that you can buy online, for some reasonable fee
that includes ALL multimedia codecs, and proprietary hardware
drivers. Since software patents are not valid anywhere else (I
am so wishing that I can