Re: desktop-devel-list Digest, Vol 23, Issue 9

[James Henstridge <james jamesh id au>]

Ronald S. Bultje wrote:

>On Tue, 07 Mar 2006 19:50:17 +0100, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
>  
>
>>However, not everyone in the GNOME community necessarily agrees with
>>this.  I got *a lot* of requests to add an mp3 recording profile to
>>gnome-media.  Historically, I've always refuted these requests because I
>>agree that GNOME should not be endorsing them.
>>    
>>
>
>You're confusing user choice with accepting and confirming validity of
>corporate patent portofolios.
>
>We'd give users choice by adding a MP3 profile by default and showing it
>when lame is installed. We'd accept and confirm validity of corporate
>patent portfolios by buying an mp3 patent license and shipping a
>restricted binary as part of the GNOME desktop.
>  
>
One thing to keep in mind is that Fluendo's MP3 codec source code is BSD
licensed.

If there are no patent related problems with using lame in a particular
region, the same would likely be true of Fluendo's codec.  So in those
regions, the "is it free software?" test won't help you pick between them.

For the rest of the world, we are in the position of not being able to
distribute either as free software.

James.