On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:50:52 -0500 "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Let's start with the basics. For a consumer OS to be unable to play > MP3s and handle podcasts is just plain not acceptable, not in the > world after iTunes. Red Hat/Fedora's duck-and-cover on this would be > understandable if the Fraunhofer patents blocked decoders, but > Fraunhofer itself has only dunned for royalties on *encoders* -- thus > Red Hat/Fedora has ceded to Fraunhofer rights it has never claimed. Hmmm, well that's interesting. So it should be possible to include an open source mp3 decoder like Underbit's MAD. [1] > I know at least one fairly influential kernel developer who threw out > Red Hat/Fedora in disgust over this. When he asked me straight up how > I could defend what he bluntly called 'corporate cowardice', I didn't > feel like I had a good answer. And I still don't. In return for all > the free development work they get, it does seem to me that it's part > of Red Hat's job to shoulder risks like these -- and that Red Hat > hasn't held up its end. Well the justification is rather simple. We're not trying to develop a system to take over the world, we're trying to develop the best _open-source_ system possible. It's not a religious issue or idealism, it's simply the goal of the Fedora project. Of course, some people don't care a whit about open source in which case, why the hell would they be using Fedora? Sean [1] http://www.underbit.com/products/mad -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
