On Wed, 2006-01-25 at 19:58 +1100, Russell Coker wrote: > On Wednesday 25 January 2006 17:40, Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org> wrote: > > On Wed, 2006-01-25 at 17:08 +1100, Russell Coker wrote: > > > 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. > > Have we consulted a lawyer about this? Probably not. > > > 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. > > iRiver will have more incentive to support OGG well if Linux distributions > take a stand on this issue. Hah hah. Yeah, sure. Or iRiver will just ignore us like they always have. (p.s. It's "Ogg". Not "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. > > If there was a patent on the MS file formats then I would advocate removing > support from Debian. MS claims they've patented the Office 12 format, the ASF format, the FAT filesystem, etc. There's a patent on 90-100% of the archive. > > > 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. > > Do we have any legal advice on this? No, we don't have any legal advice that says Musepack is patent-free. We don't have legal advice that says Ogg is patent-free. We probably don't have legal advice that says *anything* in the archive is patent-free, and I suspect if we tried we'd find out *nothing* is. I suggest you find something better to do than witch-hunt every non-Ogg format out of main. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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