[HenryFord]

MPAA recently took the the brand "Medion" which is a rebrand done by the big supermarket chains "LIDL" and "ALDI" into court. Outcome, they had to pay the royalties of all the hardware being sold in the last 2 years or so. Costed them Millions...

Nope, you're wrong On two things, actually (besides the fact that it is the MPEG LA not the MPAA):
Medion is not a rebrand by Lidl and Aldi, they just sell that stuff mainly (although there are many more stores you can buy medion hardware) - Lenovo is the main share holder of the Medion AG and thus technically "owns" the brand "Medion" as well.

The other thing is: The patented technologies are algorythms which technically aren't software patents...(there isn't even a definition of what constitues a "software patent" - german law for example (which is in line with the europe patent law) states, that a specific implementation of software can indeed be patented when the implementation provides a technical contribution (whatever that means). And in fact, there is a lot of software here in Europe that indeed uses patented technology.

Edit:
And, ah, whatever VLC might state: Fact of the matter is, that they use an open-source implementation of the codec in a software they distribute for free and which is also open-source. So, technically, by the standards of the MPEG LA the customer now becomes responsible for paying the royalities. The license terms of all those codecs however clearly state that this is not necessary, as long as you only use it for personal usage. As soon as you want to use the Codecs in anything commercial, you have to pay for them. The same thing goes for FFmpeg and the used libmpeg2.
This however becomes difficult when parts of the software are free and open-source and only certain features require you to pay for them. Yes, I'm looking at you here, Plex.

[nickr]

And I quote from the Wiki

XBMC source code is distributed as open source under GPL (GNU General Public License),[15] it is sponsored via the tax-exempt registered non-profit organization, XBMC Foundation, and is developed by a global free software community of volunteers working on XBMC for free in their spare time without being motivated by financial or material gain.[25)(26)

You can rant all you like davilla but you are fundamentally wrong. Go on defending your position and you just dig a deeper hole for yourself and others here. You may by held by a god like status in theses parts. But xbmc finding itself being used for commercial gain is wrong which ever way you dice it.

Did I ever say that it would be wrong to run xbmc on let's say the Android platform, no I didn't, you chose to say that. I have no beef seeing it on any platform. That's free choice and i'm all for that but to commercialise xbmc will be it's downfall.

Pivos may have published its source code and in that it was being fully compliant but it made an attempt to lock it down so it couldn't be run on other M1/M3 devices and to me that fundamentally breaks the spirit of what xbmc is.

Pivos is just getting what it deserves, a taste of its own medicine from the Chinese.

Clearly your understanding of the GPL is nil.

[davilla]

You know, given the amount of abuse I've taken and the complete abuse of XBMC for Android that I see going on right now, I'm beginning to regret providing the effort and coding to bring XBMC for Android into the light.

[nickr]

You know, given the amount of abuse I've taken and the complete abuse of XBMC for Android that I see going on right now, I'm beginning to regret providing the effort and coding to bring XBMC for Android into the light.

Well if you need any encouragement, you have it from me, and many others in the silent majority. Your efforts, and all of the devs, are greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work and don't be discouraged by a few tossers.

[Anastrophe]

Ditto

[PatK]

+1 on that comment and I don't even use an Android device, but like the idea of XBMC across platform... it's the gateway to something better.