On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, William Hooper wrote: >> I must say that I'm a rather disappointed the the status quo WRT MP3 >> support in Red Hat 9 remains the same. Considering that both Mandrake >> and SUSe are releasing their next versions with MP3 support in them... >> (... unless I'm seriously mistaken about this!). > >This has been commented to death. Red Hat has explained their reasons: >http://www.redhat.com/advice/speaks_80mm.html > >I don't see the MP3 situation changing, hence don't expect MP3 support in >Red Hat. And for the record I would like to thank Red Hat for standing by >the concept of Open Source by not shipping/licensing things that violate >the spirit of Open Source.
I'd also like to add another point... People who want MP3 support, presumeably are planning on using such support to play MP3 content which they legally own. That would mean that they have the original music or content on CDROM or some other medium. Red Hat provides ogg vorbis support, which surpasses MP3 in both quality, and compression. Users are encouraged to transition to OGG, which is true "free software" and not encumbered by patent issues. That doesn't resolve all of the legal uses of the MP3 format, however it does resolve the majority of legal uses. This assumes that a given person is in fact playing content which they do legally have the right to. For streaming MP3, or for content which is legally redistributable in MP3 format, users are free to obtain MP3 plugins or download and add on MP3 playback support from one of many places. Just because it does not come with Red Hat Linux doesn't mean it is not possible to use 15 seconds after you finish installing the OS. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
