On Wed, 2006-01-25 at 17:08 +1100, Russell Coker wrote: > On Wednesday 25 January 2006 12:10, Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org> wrote: > > 2) We take the patent issue seriously, and drop all MP3 support. > > MP3 software does not belong in Debian/main. Unlike many patents the MPEG > patents probably have a good basis. To make it clear, this is a *radical* divergence from our previous position. If other distributions start shipping the Fluendo plugin, it is also a major step backwards in usability. > As far as I am aware OGG media is a good alternative to MPEG in every > technical measure. OGG is not as well supported by 3rd party devices (no > support in iPod for example) but there are devices which support it (iRiver > as an example - incidentally the iRiver gives better sound quality according > to the experts and allows recording so is better than the iPod anyway). It's clear to me you've never had to use an iRiver's Ogg support. It fails outside a limited bitrate range, drains battery faster, does not read metadata, and is not available on all devices. Newer iRivers also use a proprietary communications protocol that is not yet supported in Debian. Finally, the recording is MP3 only. Technical qualities of a format have also never been a major consideration of Debian's support of them, or in user choices. If we're going to do it, do it because we're taking a stand or think there's a license violation. Not because we like Ogg. > By continuing to support MPEG in Debian/main we are decreasing the support of > OGG. By continuing to support MS Word .doc in Debian/main, we are decreasing the support of OpenDocument. So what? Users have millions, billions of files in these formats. If we can support them, we should. > This also applies to mpc123. The Musepack developers are of the opinion that they no longer infringe on any patents, as the algorithm has diverged wildly from the MPEG-1 Layer 2 algorithm upon which it is based. It's on at least as good legal ground as every other audio format in Debian. So please leave it out of this discussion. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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