On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 05:24 -0500, sean wrote: > 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 [1] Unfortunately, this info is about 5 years out of date. Fraunhofer licensed the rights to Thomson Multimedia, who then made a big fuss about players. They have a published rate of $0.75US per unit for mp3 decoding software, which would have to be paid by whoever distributes the software. Obviously this model is incompatible with Fedora Core and Extras. -- Peter -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
