On Wed, 2006-01-25 at 07:49 +0100, Daniel Baumann wrote: > Russell Coker wrote: > > MP3 software does not belong in Debian/main. Unlike many patents the MPEG > > patents probably have a good basis. > > > > Any software which is based on Frauhoffer patents (MP3 and other similar > > encoding systems) should be on an external archive. > > From a technical point of view, I disagree. Fluendo seems to have a > patent license for its plugin, and they are allowed to relicense it > (under some conditions, e.g. the redistribution contract). Assumed, that > this is all sane, there is no legal problem to include it main. To get this license one must agree to a contract that forbids modification and further redistribution. It's not going to happen for Debian. Alternately, you can download the source, which is freely licensed. But then you don't get the patent license. So we're back at the status quo, but with an MP3 decoder that's worse than the one we currently don't have a patent license for. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part