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

["Ronald S. Bultje" <rbultje ronald bitfreak net>]

Hi James,

On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, James Henstridge wrote:
> Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> >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.
[..]
> 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.

I don't think that was my point. My point is that GNOME should not make
the decision of whether people can easily encode in a popular media
format, regardless of whether we are in the position to ship that software
or not. Therefore, offering an MP3 encoding option when the MP3 encoder is
installed (which says nothing about shipping MP3 encoders or buying MP3
encoder licenses) seems like an obvious way in which we could make GNOME
more user-friendly. The current two-step process (which is undocumented,
un-userfriendly and undiscoverable) is kind of silly. We know we can do
better.

The fact that some people consider MP3 a non-free format and that some
people are opposed to the use of non-free formats should not make it hard
for other people to use those formats if they prefer.

Ronald