dropping mp3 support in rh8

[Steve Holmes]

Yea, this is really more of a question to the OGG/Vorbis folks, but I
wonder if there is any flash updates or something to make a Phylips
Expanium MP3 CD player OGG/Vorbis compatible?  I think some of these
players have some software update functionality; don't know about the
Phylips modle.

On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 10:22:34AM +1000, Aaron Howell wrote:
> Its up to each individual Linux distribution as to how they respond to the changes to FHG's licensing.
> My understanding of it is that the license fees need to be paid on use, not distribution.
> The question then comes back to the policies of the different distribution manufacturers.
> Some distributors like Debian insist that everything in their main distribution be DFSG complient
> (that is free for both commercial and non commercial use).
> In their case, they will most likely respond by moving all their mp3 players out into non-free and letting the users decide whether to pay the license fees or not.
> In the case of Redhat they've decided to deal with it by removing mp3 altogether.
> other distributions will respond differently based on their licensing policy.
> FHG really though is making the same mistake Unisys did with GIF, in that they released it for free use then tried to charge a licensing fee.
> Everyone laughed at them, and all it achieved was to hasten the adoption of jpeg and png as web standards (you see very few gifs out there these days).
> The same will happen to mp3, this move will hasten the adoption of ogg vorbis which is a superior format anyway,
> and mp3 will gradually die off. (the big blow will come when players like Winamp and MS Media Player drop support for mp3,
> and lets face it, Microsoft has been wanting to do that for ages, plus handheld players will move to either WMA or OGG format).
> So, IMHO not supporting mp3 is no more of a loss than not supporting gif, when there are other just as useful standards out there,
> and FHG is shooting itself in the foot.
> Regards
> Aaron
> On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 05:52:24PM -0500, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> > Why is it that slackware still offers mp3 support.
> > Aren't they comercial too?
> > And how does a volenteer distro like debian fit into all of this?
> > 
> > Greg
> 
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