Actually I've been sending myself some random data recently to test some mime decoding. I generally choose between/dev/random and/dev/zero depending on my mood.
I guess if I thought I was going to go to jail I wouldn't do it but still I'm sure people do it sometimes. Perhaps by accident, perhaps to test things, try to break software. etc.etc. I'm sure there are reasons.
There is a large body of people able and willing to write free SOFTWARE.... which unfortunatly isn't the main issue when it comes to compressing video or audio. There are many free decompressors and compressors for the MP3 format now because the standard is known and relatively easy to implement compared to how hard it is to invent a new alogarithm for compression. Producing new alogarithms takes some very highly qualified people a lot of time to produce. The free software group doesn't have any (or enough) of these people to come close to what a company with lots of money to throw at a problem can produce. But the companies who invent new codecs spend their money in the hope that something useful is eventually produced so it's not suprising than when something is, it is patented. Unfortunatly the best approach is probably just trying to convince companies that if they allow free players to be produced their codec will become more standard and that will equate to more money for them in patent revenues for encoders.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I've been sending myself some random data recently to test some mime decoding. I generally choose between /dev/random and /dev/zero depending on my mood.
I guess if I thought I was going to go to jail I wouldn't do it but still I'm sure people do it sometimes. Perhaps by accident, perhaps to test things, try to break software. etc.etc. I'm sure there are reasons.
There is a large body of people able and willing to write free SOFTWARE.... which unfortunatly isn't the main issue when it comes to compressing video or audio.
There are many free decompressors and compressors for the MP3 format now because the standard is known and relatively easy to implement compared to how hard it is to invent a new alogarithm for compression.
Producing new alogarithms takes some very highly qualified people a lot of time to produce. The free software group doesn't have any (or enough) of these people to come close to what a company with lots of money to throw at a problem can produce. But the companies who invent new codecs spend their money in the hope that something useful is eventually produced so it's not suprising than when something is, it is patented.
Unfortunatly the best approach is probably just trying to convince companies that if they allow free players to be produced their codec will become more standard and that will equate to more money for them in patent revenues for encoders.