Fedora Will Get Full Mp3 Support, As IIS Fraunhofer Terminates Mp3 Licensing Program (fedoramagazine.org)

An anonymous reader quotes Fedora Magazine: Both MP3 encoding and decoding will soon be officially supported in Fedora. Last November the patents covering MP3 decoding expired and Fedora Workstation enabled MP3 decoding via the mpg123 library and GStreamer... The MP3 codec and Open Source have had a troubled relationship over the past decade, especially within the United States. Historically, due to licensing issues Fedora has been unable to include MP3 decoding or encoding within the base distribution... A couple of weeks ago IIS Fraunhofer and Technicolor terminated their licensing program and just a few days ago Red Hat Legal provided the permission to ship MP3 encoding in Fedora.

Comments

Re: Linux? Bad choice.

[darthsilun]

Why was this voted -1? Very informative.

Maybe because it's factually incorrect.

GPL is the GNU Public License, not, as the OP claims, the GNU Protective License.

Compiling with gcc does not infect your source. You might be required to release your source for other reasons, but not because you compiled it with gcc. Their lawyers are mistaken. And even if you wanted to be ultra conservative and believe the lawyers anyway, you can always compile with clang, or Intel's icc, or AMD's acc to get around that.

Finally, the GPL doesn't require you to give source to everyone. You only have to give it to people who ask for it. Let's say you build a system for Dewey Cheatham and Howe. If they're the only ones who know about it, and they're the only ones who could ask for it. If you put your software your software on a web site for download only then would anyone know about it and be able to ask for the source

No, IANAL. But I've been working with FOSS and the GPL for 25 years, so I know a little something about it. In the end though it's always what your own lawyer tells you that matters. So get a lawyer and pay for your legal advice.

Re:Fraunhofer can stuff it

[bill_mcgonigle]

Who cares about Fraunhofer's MP3?

Anybody who works with audio that is not 100% in his control from mic to distribution.

As somebody who did some grad work with psychoacoustic modeling, everybody who was a little bit informed on the subject at the time knew that Fraunhofer's patents were BS, well-known stuff. I'm not sure why they weren't invalidated for prior art; it must have been a very narrow claim that MPEG just happened to standardize.

They may have gotten some licensing revenue from this, but I, as well as many others on the open side of the industry, will never do business with them (ever) after the pain they've caused. Same goes for the patent regimes of the respective governments, since it takes two to tango with IP.