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Why MP3 is not included in Fedora?

These press releases speak themselves:


Read the excellent post on Fedora was right about MP3!.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This just shows how software patents can hurt. It doesn't reflect upon Fedora's mp3 decision. It looks like Microsoft (and Dell, Gateway) are getting sued for technology they licensed from Fraunhofer (the mp3 inventors). In the field of signal (and specifically audio) coding, Bell Labs are like IBM. They have a related patent on everything important, it's just whether they want to sue you or not. Even the Ogg guys, and by extension Fedora, are not out of their reach.
Unknown said…
> Other than non-being open source

It's not open-source that's the issue. There's plenty of oss/gpl mp3 code (e.g. libmad, lame).

mp3 is nonfree due to patents, period.
post #1: true. It further confirms that software patents causes mess which won't be for Bell Labs interests to get their methos being reverse-engineering.

Rex: Thanks for pointing that out. I updated the blog to reflect it.
They have a related patent on everything important, it's just whether they want to sue you or not. Even the Ogg guys, and by extension Fedora, are not out of their reach.

As someone said before: show the infringing codes and we will remove them.

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