Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Red Hat Announces Fedora Will Support MP3 Playback (fedoraproject.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the expired-playback-patents dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader jrincayc shares news from Red Hat's Fedora Engineering Manager, Tom Callaway. On the Fedora-legal mailing list, Callaway announced: Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time.
And the same day Christian Schaller announced on the Gnome blog that mp3 playback would be supported in Fedora Workstation 25. You should be able to download the mp3 plugin on Day 1 through GNOME Software or through the missing codec installer in various GStreamer applications. For Fedora Workstation 26 I would not be surprised if we decide to ship it on the install media.
He added, "I know this has been a big wishlist item for a long time for a lot of people..."

140 comments

  1. Welcome to the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fedora users are gonna party likes its 1999!

    1. Re: Welcome to the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is great news. But does anyone know if the init problem has been fixed yet? Has systemd been stripped out?

    2. Re: Welcome to the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it took them 20 years to add mp3 support, how long do you think it takes to fix the init system which was taken in 5 years ago? Hint: do not hold your breath while waiting.

    3. Re: Welcome to the future! by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Funny

      it took them 20 years to add mp3 support, how long do you think it takes to fix the init system which was taken in 5 years ago? Hint: do not hold your breath while waiting.

      I don't expect systemd to be fixed, ever, but in 5 years you can expect the CADT team to invent a yet another init scheme, with even more regressions, and force everyone to transition to it.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    4. Re: Welcome to the future! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't expect systemd to be fixed, ever, but in 5 years you can expect the CADT team to invent a yet another init scheme, with even more regressions, and force everyone to transition to it.

      Lets call it dmetsys; it'll use double-encypted log and config files with a proprietary unlock key that costs $75 per bootup.

      All config directives will be in Sumerian, but the values will be written in Sicilian Arabic.

      Documentation must be done solely in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

      Finally, any configuration mistake should trigger an automatic format of all attached hard drives.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    5. Re: Welcome to the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Force" them? There's more than one Linux distribution out there that's not using SystemD, I'm posting from one of them (Slackware). Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything. Distributions are adopting it largely by choice, if they hadn't they would have rejected SystemD the same way the community rejected XFree86 in favour of x.org...a move that many people thought was going to kill off free operating systems altogether at the time. I mean how can you ditch _XFree86_?! Most people don't even know its name at this point.

      Things change. Trying to pretend like your favourite distribution has suddenly been "forced" to take up SystemD is just being an apologist for your software-du-jour I'm afraid...they all had a choice, SystemD is the choice that they went with. That might suck, but it doesn't make it any less true.

    6. Re: Welcome to the future! by mysidia · · Score: 1

      SystemD-NG

      In addition to binary logging its own data It will contain its own Klog and Syslogd implementation, And you'll have no option to use your own syslog daemon anymore.

      Everything will be configured with command line tools instead of config files.

      It will ship with three new integrated filesystem formats called SystemdBootFS, SystemdLogFS, And SystemdConfigFS, And after the conversion every Linux machine's root filesystem will have to be SystemdBootFS, and the Logs will be stored on the SystemdLogS, which will be solely binary for the logs with no directory structures.

      Also, the SystemDConfigFS will be the dedicated config filesystem which has no traditional directory structure but functions similarly to the Windows registry and has a similar role in regards to Systemd services configurations (Which will now encompass all major core system services, and remote network services).

    7. Re:Welcome to the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was wondering if I'd accidentally gotten a repost from 15 years ago...

    8. Re: Welcome to the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they all had a choice, SystemD is the choice that they went with. That might suck, but it doesn't make it any less true.

      When you make systemd a dependance of gnome, you skew the choice a bit, don't you think? Also, systemd is the easy choice (less work for the maintainers), not necessarily the right choice.

    9. Re: Welcome to the future! by fisted · · Score: 1

      Why, isn't it systemd-mp3d that enables this newfangled mp3 support in the first place?

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    10. Re: Welcome to the future! by rjmx · · Score: 1

      Currently that's scored "4:Funny". It *would* be funny if it wasn't so close to the truth.

    11. Re:Welcome to the future! by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Fedora Linux is intentionally limited, due to being American based. There are three reputable Remixes (A remix is Fedora++) which contains codecs and other inclusions from rpmfusion and from the Remix creator. The three Remixes, see links below, make Fedora, a truly remarkable workstation Linux. These Remixes are not American based, but use Fedora at their core. But without these, three Remixes, I would skip Fedora for some non-American Linux. It is American Patent Laws that are the Achilles heel, limiting Fedora.

      My three favourite Remixes.
      a) ChapeauLinux = Fedora++ = Fedora + rpmfusion+extraprograms+extra backgrounds (Gnome )
      b) KororaProject = Fedora++ = Fedora + rpmfusion+extraprograms+extra backgrounds (Gnome,Mate,XFCE,KDE choices)
      c) RFRemix = Fedora++ = Fedora + rpmfusion+extraprograms+extra backgrounds (Gnome,Mate,XFCE,KDE choices with the network installation verson).

      One comment about c) It comes as a network installation version and a live iso version. The live version is Gnome only and launches in Russian, but to Fedora++ users or Fedora users, The system option "Region and Language" will allow you to switch from Russian to English. The Russion version is hosted on Yandex. For you who fear hacking, I have not found any sign of this in any Russian version. The Russian versions includes source.

      After installation, the Fedora "dnf" tool or Gnome "software", native to Fedora, are used toU maintain the Remixes.
      The next release is Fedora 25. I have been a Fedora Remix biggot since Fedora20 (6 releases of Remixes or Fedora)

      As an aside. I boot SUSE, UBUNTU and a Fedora Remix). The Remix is my favourite.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    12. Re: Welcome to the future! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Dead Rat are the 600lb gorilla of the Linux world. Most other distros are little more than respins, the mainstream ones at least. It'd be a nightmare sorting the important genuine patches & fixes out from Loonart's meddling. I bet he's one of the assholes whose code doesn't need comments.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. About damn time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Welcome to the world of two decades ago!

  3. Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Linux has left the 20th century.

    1. Re:Finally... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      In which direction?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re: Finally... by Frankzy · · Score: 1

      East by north-east

  4. Mp3 playback? by MikeTheBike · · Score: 0

    That is so 90s...

  5. wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    This just shows how out of touch all those open sores purity zealots are

    1. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      No it doesn't. There was a patent on mp3 decoding and still one on encoding. Red hat not wanting to be sued by Fraunhofer opted out of paying royalties. Everyone using mpg123, xmms, etc have wilfully ignored this law because really how would a university sue every user? They don't they sue distributors. That is why Be Inc , Microsoft, apple, Ubuntu etc all pay royalties.

      The patents have expired, now it can be included without violating the law

    2. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In WHAT fucking dumb ass shit hole of a country were those patents valid?

    3. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Take a wild guess.

    4. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meanwhile every other thing made ever including my toaster has been able to decode mp3.

    5. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... because they paid for the privilege, or knew they were too insignificant, or too far beyond the reach of the patent lawyers. The real issue is why redhat never saw fit to include the full codec source in easily compilable form as an educational and research and fair use feature of their distro. That answer too involves patent lawyers.

    6. Re: wtf? by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      They pay a royalty per device for it. Try charging a royalty per copy for something you distribute for free and see how long you'll stay in business...

    7. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Yeah, right. You know fuck all about business. Red Hat could have inked a deal to make a one time royalty payment, but cheap niggas are cheap niggas.

    8. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      United States of Trump!

    9. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      also there's ogg vorbis and flac. MP3 can die in a fire.

    10. Re: wtf? by Cley+Faye · · Score: 1

      Technically, it won't be valid in the US of Trump. It was valid *before*...

    11. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A country where people who spent years researching algorithms wanted to make a living while doing so.

      However, I do agree that patents and copyrights should expire much sooner than they do..

    12. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how would a university sue every user?

      Fraunhofer is not a university. It's a research society, notably the biggest in Europe.

    13. Re: wtf? by wildstoo · · Score: 1

      Germany?

    14. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it doesn't. There was a patent on mp3 decoding and still one on encoding. Red hat not wanting to be sued by Fraunhofer opted out of paying royalties. Everyone using mpg123, xmms, etc have wilfully ignored this law because really how would a university sue every user? They don't they sue distributors. That is why Be Inc , Microsoft, apple, Ubuntu etc all pay royalties.

      The patents have expired, now it can be included without violating the law

      Actually, IIRC Fraunhofer was geneous enough to supply a loophole where open-source systems could use patented MP3 technology without being liable for royalties. Red Hat, however, has a policy that even the slightest encumbrance will disqualify a product from inclusion in their standard distros, and that includes the previous ones like Fedora as well as the clone ones like CentOS. And to be fair, Red Hat is a large enough and profitable enough business that should Fraunhofer ever decide they'd like an extra revenue source...

      DVD decoding technology on the other hand...

    15. Re: wtf? by jrincayc · · Score: 1

      No, there was no loophole with open-source systems. I emailed Technicolor and asked and was told no. (Technicolor is responsible for the Fraunhofer patents in the US.)

    16. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Algorithms and algorithm research must not patentable as long as we are not able to patent math.

    17. Re: wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah right! You know a lot about business. Red Hat could use your expert strategy skills right now so go make a deal with them.

  6. Late much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Jeez, even Debian has been able to play mp3's, and you know what dicks they are about everything.

  7. Why bother... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We bypassed the damage and now have better things.

    1. Re:Why bother... by NotInHere · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed we do, but consider that reencoding files in vorbis and opus makes them subject to generational loss, and you'll still need an mp3 decoder for that. Plus, you'll lose the ability to share it with other people, because they won't be able to play back the file, or wonder what the ".opus" file extension is.

      Its sad, but if you show this headline to random non technical people, and explained to them that fedora was an OS like windows or mac os, they will think that fedora couldn't play back audio files before.

    2. Re: Why bother... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why MP3 in the first place? I've used ISO images or PCM since I got my first Plextor drive with functional DA extraction in the late 1900's. For analog sources, I use 24/192 PCM.

    3. Re: Why bother... by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Size and slow networking. Remember, a lot of files were shared on dial up connections. Outside of technical implementations for specific purposes, the vast majority of people's exposure to MP3 was through the use of Napster and such. This is what made it popular and with all those files in the wild there would remain a need to at least play them back.

      By late 1900s, I'm assuming you meant 98-99 or later when computers commonly had storage larger than a gig or two and 1.5 meg or faster internet speeds were becoming common (although still expensive) in larger cities. I remember upgrading from a 14.4 modem to a 33.6 and bragging about the speed increases on a local BBS with an internet gateway (which eventually became one of the largest dial up services in my area). My first CDROM was larger than my hard drive (640 meg). We were trading MP3s back then- although they were mostly lectures and crap and not music which Napster popularized the format with.

    4. Re: Why bother... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Why MP3 in the first place? I've used ISO images or PCM since I got my first Plextor drive with functional DA extraction in the late 1900's.

      I use OGG, in my 1909 Hupmobile.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re: Why bother... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why not use flac or some other lossless codec for those to save disk space?

    6. Re: Why bother... by backslashdot · · Score: 1

      Ok grandpa, but wasn't it Teddy Roosevelt that popularized it?

    7. Re: Why bother... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why MP3 in the first place? I've used ISO images or PCM since I got my first Plextor drive with functional DA extraction in the late 1900's. For analog sources, I use 24/192 PCM.

      Because a lot of external services, including sound clips on web sites and internet streaming radio are MP3-based. You don't have to use MP3 on your own audion, but it's still a lot more convenient to have the ability to play it when it's presented from less-enlightened sources.

  8. Yeeeij,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most patents related with this have expired:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and_legislation

     

    It's really, really very sad that we had to wait this long for this to happen, not all Fedora users live in the US and basically, the Fedora leadership has said a big 'fuck you' to those not living in a software patent tyranny.

     

    So,.... yeeeeeeij!

    1. Re: Yeeeij,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be new here.

      They are an American company, they have to abide by American laws.

    2. Re: Yeeeij,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fedoeria is just redhatz, redhat was rubbish, especially at package management. Who the h3ll would want to run fedoria? Oh yeah, the acidemic nerds at work that design over complicated systems and dont document anything. When they leave and get replaced with real engineers from the real world that is real, many a LULZWTF.

    3. Re: Yeeeij,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be new here.

      They are an American company, they have to abide by American laws.

      American companies MAKE American laws.

  9. 1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm a long-time Slashdot lurker, this story reminds me of the early 2000's. I'm surprised that this is still an issue, the rest of the world moved on and here we are still talking about mpeg codecs. Looking forward to the comments.

    1. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2

      The MP3 format that we know today came to light in 1995 with the finalization of MPEG-2 layer 3. AS for actual implementation, the first reference implementation was at the end of 1994, and the first player somewhere in 1995.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    2. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

      s/the first reference implementation was at the end of 1994/the first encoder reference implementation was at the end of 1994

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      I'm sure it's an issue for some, but given how cheap and small storage is today compared to 20 years ago, it's becoming a non-issue in that you don't need mp3 or other lossy compressions anymore. A CD-sized album is generally less than 700 MB uncompressed, or around half of that compressed. With tiny affordable USB keys and SD cards now being in the 128 GB range, and hard drives in the 4 TB range, MP3 and other lossy encodings are no longer as vital.
      Back when a memory stick was 256 MB and a typical HD 20-40 GB, things were quite different.

      I quite frankly think many rip to MP3 out of old habit, not because they need it.

    4. Re: 1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Remember h.264 is NOT free, Sony et al just are not enforcing the patent yet

    5. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't MP3 based upon the MPEG-1 audio? MPEG-1 was the ye'olde Video CD based format and MPEG-2 the DVD compression format which came later.

    6. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

      MP3's started out as MPEG1 Layer 3. When the MPEG2 Layer 3 spec was finalized, there was some stuff that made it back into the MPEG1 Layer 3 spec.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    7. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even compressed my entire music collection doesn't fit on my phone, so I would say we still need compression to carry around a decent amount of music.

    8. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      With typical lossless FLAC compression, you need around 380 MB per hour of music. That means that with a 128 GB microSD card, you can play non-stop, 24/7 for more than two weeks without ever repeating a single song. That's not enough?

      How did you ever cope back when an MP3 player held 128 MB?

    9. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Or back when a Walkman took one cassette, for that matter?

    10. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      moved on to what? 'selfies', social media, the 'cloud', and incomprehensible UIs?

      I'd rather discuss mpeg codecs.. much more interesting.

    11. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You carried more than one cassette - easy!

    12. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That means that with a 128 GB microSD card, you can play non-stop, 24/7 for more than two weeks without ever repeating a single song. That's not enough?

      No. It's still not enough - but it is getting closer. I want to be able to *choose* any song or album in my collection at any time, not have to choose from a subset or work out what subset I might want in advance.

      For me that would mean about 500 GB storage for compressed lossless or about half that for reasonable quality lossy.

    13. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      No, it's not. Not when you can trivially have access to your entire collection and don't have to predict what you will be in the mood for. Not when you can avoid having to periodically swap out what subset of music you have on your phone at any given time. Not when you can leave more room for other content.

      Of course copying all that data to the phone in the first place is kind of daffy. That's what cloud storage is for. Compressed formats still make sense for cheaper, faster streaming though.

    14. Re:1993 just called, they want their codec back. by tepples · · Score: 1

      given how cheap and small storage is today compared to 20 years ago

      Even if storage is cheap, cellular or satellite data transfer is still $5 to $10 per GB.

  10. Trump Train! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Choo! Choo!

  11. Why has it taken [all] this long? by bogaboga · · Score: 1

    He added, "I know this has been a big wishlist item for a long time for a lot of people..."

    I am just wondering why this "big wishlist item" has taken this long. Anyone?

    1. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by wiggles · · Score: 1

      The MP3 format is closed and proprietary - owned by Fraunhoffer, if I recall correctly. It hasn't been legal without some sort of licensing agreement in place, and the community won't pay to license.

    2. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Welcome to the wonderful world of software patents. Thanks to "illegal" free mp3 players, I've never wanted for mp3 playback under Linux (but I haven't used Red Hat except where mandated by "enterprise" since 1996, either).

    3. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by dohzer · · Score: 1

      So if the community wouldn't pay to license in the past, I take it they are willing now?

    4. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by wiggles · · Score: 1

      ftfa:

      We cannot comment on specific patents, not now, not ever. Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time.

      It appears Red Hat has entered into some sort of double secret licensing agreement with Fraunhofer that they can't disclose the details on.

    5. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by knorthern+knight · · Score: 4, Informative

      > So if the community wouldn't pay to license in the past, I take it they are willing now?

      Nope. It's just that the mp3-decoding patents have expired, so there is no need for a licence now. https://www.tunequest.org/a-bi...

      Some patents for mp3-encoding are still in effect, but they expire by the end of 2017. Expect Redhat to ship mp3-encoders then.

      --

      I'm not repeating myself
      I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
    6. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nah, decoding MP3 is no longer covered, but the final patent on encoding doesn't expire until December 2017.

    7. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Closed and proprietary? On what planet? The ISO standard docs are trivial to get ahold of. You have a strange definition of "closed and proprietary" when the format is openly standardized.

    8. Re: Why has it taken [all] this long? by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      Actually the latest analysis is that it is April 2017, The December 2017 was a mistake.

    9. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Haven't software patenta essentially been struck down in the US?

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    10. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by a_n_d_e_r_s · · Score: 1

      Well more or less. Its no broad invalidation thats been done. But the line has moved. So if someone should go to court and try to get it invalidated it might work to get it invalid.

      But that cost alot of money. And its not 100% sure that it will work. It depends on the court what they say. So it can also take along time to get it invalidated. The owner of the patent will probably make sure to draw it out so expect several years of patent ligiation.

      So people just mostly wait for patent to expire.

      --
      Just saying it like it are.
    11. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Patents.

      Last year, 2015, the majority of patents expired in the US

      Fraunhofer IIS were a bunch of greedy assholes suing everyone who encoded mp3's and didn't license their codec. They decided to allow for free mp3 playback since that would be double-dipping.

      Red Hat probably stayed clear the entire minefield just to be safe and I don't blame them. Many geeks switched to FLAC (50% lossless compression) or Ogg.

      --
      HDCP = Hollywood's Draconian Copy Protection system which does nothing to stop pirates and only hinders legitimate customers.

    12. Re: Why has it taken [all] this long? by dohzer · · Score: 2

      So all we need now is for Disney to step in and extend the patent to 90 years?

    13. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 0

      Fraunhofer continues to advance technology, and the money to do that doesn't come from the magical unicorn printing press. It's anticapitalistic toads like you that make this world a worse place to live.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    14. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      Ad hominem much?

      It is myopic materialistic leeches like yourself that want to hold society and Science hostage with paywalls, pretend you can patent math, inflict your bullshit copy protection schemes so that legitimate consumers can't backup their property meanwhile the pirates already laugh at your stupidity because they are "kracked" you nonsense, try to outlaw libraries for sharing knowledge, sue people for sharing CD's because you didn't get your precious "cut", bully and badger people for sharing numbers with frivolous lawsuits about Imaginary Property because you are too stupid too understand numbers can represent anything, try to claim ownership of DNA even thought you didn't _invent_ it, etc. all because you worship the false god of Greed.

      See I can play the retarded game of ad hominems too.

      Maybe if you would play more attention to some of the greatest minds this world has ever seen you might actually get a clue stick:

      If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

      -- Thomas Jefferson

      If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

      -- Sir Isaac Newton

      But you would rather fuck everyone over to make a quick buck. Who gives a shit about my fellow man, right? They are just resources to be exploited. Who cares if I con people into buying over-priced rocks. Your false profit (sic.) is P. T. Barnum and his bible is "There's a sucker born every minute"

      One day you will eventually realize that relationships are more valuable then money.

      The questions is -- will you realize this before or after you die?

      Because one day you WILL lose everything -- and the only thing that carries over into the next life is how well, or poorly, you treated everyone.

      So spare me the anticapitalist claptrap.

      When the fuck are you going to grow up?

    15. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Fraunhofer IIS were a bunch of greedy assholes suing everyone who encoded mp3's and didn't license their codec.

      I wonder if the royalties they got were worth the PR damage.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    16. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Tough+Love · · Score: 0

      Did you skip your meds today?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    17. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      I believe one of the circuits has basically said that they're invalid using the supreme ruling.

      But I guess yeah, money until its firmed up. I'd think redhat has a lot to gain their though.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    18. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      What PR damage?

      99.999999999% of the Earth's population has never heard of them.

    19. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      I see you also like to use ad hominems with anyone who disagrees with you.

      /sarcasm I guess this patent attorney who questioned the value of Imaginary Property also didn't take his meds.

      --
      There is a name for people who like to pretend they can own a number or formula: Delusional

    20. Re: Why has it taken [all] this long? by mattdm · · Score: 1

      No secret deals, double or otherwise. Fedora does not work like that.

    21. Re: Why has it taken [all] this long? by mattdm · · Score: 2

      No secret deals, double or otherwise. Fedora does not work like that.

      I mean, except for our deal with the Knights Templar to make systemd the one true init system of the new world order. That one, we did do, but it's triple-secret, so can only be revealed in Slashdot comments.

    22. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Decoding MP3 was encumbered by U.S. patents, and encoding still is. These patents are not available for licensing under terms compatible with any free software license. Therefore, all software lawfully distributed in the United States that decodes MP3 was, and that encodes MP3 still is, proprietary software.

    23. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      99.999999999% of the Earth's population has never heard of them.

      The small fraction of the world's population who has heard of them happens to include nearly all the engineers they might hope to employ. (BTW, you are challenged with counting decimal points.)

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    24. Re:Why has it taken [all] this long? by yuhong · · Score: 1

      And I would not be surprised if there were ways to work around the patents.

  12. Welcome to 1999 by geek · · Score: 3

    This type of shit really holds Linux back from the mainstream

    1. Re:Welcome to 1999 by fibonacci8 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Software Patents? Yes we know. According to OSNews the last of the patents expires in April of 2017. So the base install of the next version of Fedora should be safe to include software for encoding and decoding of MP3 by then.

      --
      Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
    2. Re:Welcome to 1999 by caseih · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You've been around Slashdot since nearly the beginning so you should know this is clearly untrue. MP3 support in Linux back in the early 2000s wouldn't have made a bit of difference to overall Linux adoption. In fact many distros ignored the IP issues and simply included the codec without paying for a license. It would be nice to have a clear explanation of why they feel it's okay to ship an implementation of this patented algorithm now vs a few years ago. This is of course ignoring the fact that there should never have been a software patent on something like mp3 playback in the first place.

      Linux has always been held back by the same things its always been held back by. It's an OS by geeks for geeks with a learning curve, bickering developers, petty egos, and contradictory goals. And more importantly there's the Windows/Office hegemony which still exists to this day, though it's weakening somewhat with MS's move to put Office in the cloud and sell subscriptions. Unlike Linux distributions and desktop environment developers, MS has always understood who their customer was. At least they used to.

    3. Re:Welcome to 1999 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really, the popular distros I use already contain a package for proprietary codecs and that is most likely installed by default. Cannot remember the last time I did not have mp3 support out of the box.

    4. Re:Welcome to 1999 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would be nice to have a clear explanation of why they feel

      lol, feelings rarely have clear explanations. But seriously, the answer no doubt varies based on jurisdiction, location, and other (legal) threat modeling. I'm just waiting for the fallout of Trump's lifelong behavior meeting the lawyerly threat model of becoming president. I admit, I scoffed at that mathmatician who predicted Trump's victory. Now I'm hoping his prediction of impeachment is as on the mark.

    5. Re:Welcome to 1999 by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      Back in the early 2000s, it probably didn't matter since the typical Linux user knew how to work around stuff like this. Part of being a desktop Linux user was learning how to figure out the "little annoyances" - how to get wifi working, how to get your desktop scanner functional, getting your computer to sleep/hibernate, etc. Heck, I remember rebuilding the gnome-games rpm so it would include the games Red Hat removed over concerns about licensing issues...

      But now, at least at our university - I see a lot of desktop Linux users who are about as knowledgeable as a typical Mac or Windows user. Stuff like ssh tunneling completely flummoxes them. Given that mp3 is still quite prevalent, this is a good thing for those sorts of Linux users.

      On a side note... it's sort of funny that, nowadays, very few of the people I know who do know a lot about Linux actually use it as their primary desktop OS - most of them are Mac users, with the majority of the rest running some flavor of bsd.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    6. Re:Welcome to 1999 by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Not really. It only takes a download to fix just like with MS Windows. People are used to that on all platforms so I don't think mp3 made a difference one way or the other.

    7. Re:Welcome to 1999 by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 1

      I don't remember MP3 playback being built in to Mac OS or Windows in 1999 either. If I recall correctly, I was using SoundJam MP on the Mac and Winamp on Windows, both third-party software that were not bundled with the OS, back then.

      --
      Imagine all the people...
    8. Re:Welcome to 1999 by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      This type of shit really holds Linux back from the mainstream

      What the hell are you talking about. Linux rules the world at the moment, it's easier to enumerate the niches Linux doesn't dominate than the ones it does.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    9. Re:Welcome to 1999 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't remember MP3 playback being built in to Mac OS or Windows in 1999 either. If I recall correctly, I was using SoundJam MP on the Mac and Winamp on Windows, both third-party software that were not bundled with the OS, back then.

      Bought a Mac in 1998 for my first year of uni. The OS didn't matter: Quicktime 3 came bundled with the computer (which had the brand new OS 8.5) and played it just as well as mov files. Either that or QT version 4 which came via QT3 upgrades or OS 9 machines a school year later. Still, that's all built-in. I'll remind you that all Soundjam and MacAmp did was ensure you actually could enjoy a playlists, and some skinning, ala Winamp.

      For Windows, I recall some version of IE 4 or 5 or maybe Media Player itself added a boatload of codecs, but WAV and MP3 files were represented as palette swapped versions of the same spearker-glyph logo. So it's likely that Windows 98 itself was already playing the MP3s for you if you paid for it back then.

    10. Re:Welcome to 1999 by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      Only in that the default audio playback application bundled with the OS could not legally handle MP3's, forcing you to use a 3rd party application, which was the default behavior for most Windows users through at least XP. I'd imagine it had about as much relevance as being unable to burn a CD back in the day without software like Roxio (or whatever the OSS comparable app was, I was still in grade school.) The big drawback to Linux for decades was simply that it didn't ship with the computer you bought from Dell (or Best Buy, or Circuit City, or whatever...) and that it required a non-trivial effort to get to the level of functionality that most people expected from a PC post- Windows 95. Of course, there is the continuous struggle of an OS that is designed from the ground up to avoid as many licensing and royalty restrictions as possible, since for much of the PC's history, code was written for profit and not just to be sweet. Furthermore, am I really replying to a 4-digit UID with this crap? I thought all of you graybeards actually knew how this crap worked...

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
  13. WTF by allo · · Score: 1

    Even my debian has mp3 playback.

    1. Re:WTF by tepples · · Score: 1

      Debian is also not a commercial project, unlike Fedora which is the unstable branch of what will become Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's therefore not quite as juicy of a target for East Texas lawyers.

    2. Re:WTF by allo · · Score: 1

      erm ... debian is the most careful project with copyrights and software patents. If something looks like it might have seen something which was in contact with proprietary code, they will not accept it.

  14. OMFG by Master5000 · · Score: -1

    Welcome to the 21st century... morons. And they keep saying that Linux is more advanced than Windows. Linux was always a toy OS designed by amateurs for amateurs. No real users use Linux on their computer, only Stallman and his fascist cronies.

    1. Re: OMFG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      You're the moron, moron.

  15. Will it support wax cylinders, too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please, let MP3 die. It's the long play VHS of digital audio.

    1. Re:Will it support wax cylinders, too? by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      It's another format that will survive because of its ubiquity. Unless you have one of the early Network Walkmans (or Redhat Linux, apparently), your device will support the format. Amazon et al. don't want a bunch of stores offering different music formats for different players.

      And memory is cheap. You can mitigate the most immediate problems with mp3 by increasing the bitrate. Sorry. It's another legacy format that will stay around for ever because it's adequate.

  16. Still comes with SystemD by Billly+Gates · · Score: 0

    I will stick with Freebsd thank you very much. Everything in /usr/ports is just a compile away and I can customize it to how I want

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:Still comes with SystemD by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      The linux way is downloading binaries from a repository.

      Sure, occasionally they compile stuff, but the BSD way of pushing source trees instead of the binary dependency hells just doesnt seem attractive to Linux users for some god awful reason.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  17. Great but.... by Wowsers · · Score: 1

    I dumped ripping to MP3 years ago, I use FLAC. Only reason to use MP3 is because most car stereos are dumb that they can't use FLAC or PCM-WAV, same reason for many pocket "MP3" players. Smart mobile phones can mostly read the formats, but their sound is dreadful.

    If only online music stores would kill off MP3 for formats like FLAC.

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
    1. Re:Great but.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Only reason to use MP3 is because most car stereos are dumb that they can't use FLAC or PCM-WAV,

      I can afford a bigger storage device, but I prefer to have my files copied and scanned in determinate time. High-bitrate mp3 sounds great pretty much always. Unless you need more than two channels, who cares?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Great but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My phone has 16GB of storage (as many many phones do). I would -like- it to hold my entire music collection (about 2500 tracks) but they don't fit. And that's compressed. I say we still need compression.

    3. Re:Great but.... by JThundley · · Score: 1

      Sounds like an argument to use Vorbis to me. Even smaller than high-bitrate mp3 and it sounds better! The only reason not to use Vorbis these days is because you're stuck with legacy equipment, just like GP said.

    4. Re:Great but.... by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      Why would you use FLAC if OPUS is fully transparent at 128kbps, and for real-world use 96kbps is fine (as opposed to MP3 which even at its max, 320kbps, has artefacts recognizable by ordinary people on cheap gear)? For stuff that's going to be further processed, perhaps, but not for music you're going to only listen to.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    5. Re:Great but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you have FLAC archived, when OPUS-2 or MPEG 17 Layer 7 or whatever comes out, you have a pristine source from which to encode.

    6. Re:Great but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Online music store won't switch to FLAC, the file size is just way too large, it would kill them bandwidth and storage wise. There's a difference between a few thousand 3MB downloads and a few thousand 50+MB downloads.

    7. Re:Great but.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The only reason not to use Vorbis these days is because you're stuck with legacy equipment, just like GP said.

      The issue to me is that I can't tell the difference even with my Sennheisers, and MP3 plays in so many more places.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:Great but.... by JThundley · · Score: 1

      That's what I said, yes.

    9. Re:Great but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Comparing different recording technologies for PCs is like comparing different types of flint for making stone tools. Yes, one is undoubtedly "better" than the other, but the end result is still very, VERY bad.

  18. Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is great for Fedora users. The news comes about eight years too late for me to be interested, Fedora is one of the only distros which didn't offer mp3 playback at install time over the past decade. But it's nice they've finally added the feature.

  19. Yet another example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That software patents are a joke and hinders advances in the world.

  20. How much longer before Wikipedia supports MP3 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How many more years until Wikipedia supports MP3 ? They don't give a damn about everyone being able to use their website right now. Will it change?

    1. Re:How much longer before Wikipedia supports MP3 ? by jrincayc · · Score: 1

      How many more years until Wikipedia supports MP3 ? They don't give a damn about everyone being able to use their website right now. Will it change?

      They are working on it, but probably will wait until encoding is also patent free. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.... and https://phabricator.wikimedia....

  21. Re: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is just Fedora, i.e., beta-testing for CentOS. Who cares?

  22. Not really an issue just tidying up by simpz · · Score: 1

    Some posters seem to think this has been difficult for Linux/Red Hat/Fedora users. It hasn't been, the mp3 support is in third party repos that are easily added. This is simply moving it from these to a core repo. This will eventually happen with all patented things (NTFS, exfat, h264, h265 etc), just some will take a very long time. User's of other platforms should be more concerned with their lacking support for open codecs e.g flac, taking until Windows 10 or still not in iTunes. But can be added as trivially to Windows as mp3 can to Fedora.

  23. Serious by Vlijmen+Fileer · · Score: 1

    Then again, nobody serious uses RedHat. It has been babylinux from its very inception...

    1. Re:Serious by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Then again, nobody serious uses RedHat. It has been babylinux from its very inception...

      Red hat owns the top 500 supercomputers, and supercomputers in general, for no good reason. Otherwise, true that. Still a some dumbasses using Fedora in business, but otherwise rpm-based distros are fading fast. Not fast enough for my taste though. RPM: just say no.

      Executive summary of Red hat: everything they touch ends up as complete crap.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:Serious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Red Hat is one of the dominating contributor to most large open source projects. Red Hat is the major player in Open Source.

  24. Why now and why significant by jrincayc · · Score: 1

    So far as I know this is the first time that a US company has said it is okay to have open source MP3 decoding. Ubuntu for example had MP3 decoding, but used a closed source decoder from Fluendo. Up until September 2015 there were patents that prevented this from happening.

  25. Holy shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First Donald Trump tricks America into electing him, and now this!

    Hell truly has frozen over!

  26. Vorbis is obsolete by mister_playboy · · Score: 2

    also there's ogg vorbis and flac. MP3 can die in a fire.

    Vorbis has been superseded by Opus.

    --
    Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
  27. One set of patents have expired, another has not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apparently too late already, but still:

    The mp3 playback support out-of-the-box is due to the playback patents all having expired.

    There are still a few in effect for encoding, but they will expire next year.

    After that, Fedora will ship with full support for both decoding and encoding, out-of-the-box.

    It has been trivially easy, just as easy as in any other OS including Windows, to add full mp3 support in Fedora and many other Linux distributions for a long time.

    And now we return to the usual bickering.

  28. now the real new is ... by Yonsy · · Score: 1

    this is NOT a mp3 library finally integrated ... <ironic>these are "mp3d" and "mp3ctl", integrated mp3 support in systemd, in few week we are going to finally have "journalctl --mp3" that give us journal logging in mp3 format!</ironic>

  29. A better idea by DrXym · · Score: 1

    It's great that some of MP3 is out of patent but there are many more audio / video codecs which are in patent and people need. It would be nice if Fedora could curate these codecs and stick them on RPMFusion and make it easy for people to install them without effort. I doubt it would take much effort to wrap it up in a simple UI with some legal disclaimers and present it to the user when they attempt to play an affected file.

  30. 2 decades later by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stay hopeful. Lincucks.

  31. You're posting to a server in that country by tepples · · Score: 1

    "In WHAT fucking dumb ass shit hole of a country" is Slashdot Media headquartered?

  32. If Debian were only main by tepples · · Score: 1

    Debian is willing to put something into the non-free archive area (and things that depend on it into contrib). In fact, the existence of the non-free section on Debian servers is why the GNU project cannot recommend Debian. Fedora is more likely to instead leave out a package entirely, except for non-free firmware that executes on peripheral coprocessors instead of the main CPU. But even that's too much non-free software for GNU.

    1. Re:If Debian were only main by allo · · Score: 1

      yeah, but non-free is still mostly patent free. And free of other serious violations. You still don't get libdvdcss without debian multimedia.
      Non-Free is more like "Licence says it's okay to distribute it, but we only put in main what's free", while debian multimedia and others are like "if they would sue, we would need to stop this, let's see how long we can provide this repo".

  33. Cool to see Spot in the news.. by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 1

    Early in my career I had some tech discussions with Tom "Spot" Callaway. Always helpful; good guy.