Arnt Karlsen wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:30:52 -0500, Carl wrote in message <[🔎] 20070219173052.GA14698@nitpicking.com>:On Mon, Feb 19, 2007 at 07:12:53AM -0800, Alan Ianson wrote:On Mon February 19 2007 01:51, Joe Hart wrote:I'll still be putting the Christian's repo in my sources list, but I thought that MP3 was one of the "questionable" formats that goes against the DFSG. Perhaps I am wrong. In any event, I was pleasantly surprised.I find that mp3 and ogg are supported by almost any media player, even mp3blaster on the console. Lame isn't in debian though (the mp3 encoder). Even wma is supported by xine now and I'm sure others too.True but doesn't answer Joe's question.MP3 is a patent-encumbered technology for compression only...last time I read about this, the Fraunhofer Institute went after those who streamed mp3's out on the net without paying the mp3 patent license. http://www.google.com/search?num=100&&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=mp3+license+site:groklaw.net http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=mp3+"Fraunhofer%20Institut"+licensePlayers (IIRC) don't require a licence. Whether that's DFSG-acceptable I couldn't say.
Hardware ones at least do. Take a look at http://www.vlsi.fi/orderform/Price_List_www.pdf.
..3 mp3 license policy pointers: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22mp3+patent%22+%22Fraunhofer+Institut%22+license+policy
All the more reason to encourage people never to use or speak of mp3 again. Ever. Greg