Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 23rd Dec 2005 11:09 UTC
The Fluendo people have fully licensed the mp3 audio codec with redistribution rights in place, meaning that future versions of Fedora or Ubuntu will be able to support mp3 out of the box. "In order to improve the GNU/Linux and Unix multimedia experience Fluendo announced today the immediate availability of their MP3 plug-in for the GStreamer multimedia framework. The MP3 decoder is available free of charge both for individual end users and GNU/Linux and Unix distribution makers. In addition to making their licensed binary plug-in available to the public Fluendo also released the source code to this MP3 plug-in under the very permissive MIT license allowing all kind of developers and companies access to it."
Thread beginning with comment 77602
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: oh, not binary actually
by ziggamon on Fri 23rd Dec 2005 11:46
in reply to "oh, not binary actually"
Member since:2005-07-06
Actually, this is entirely a good thing - as I understand it, redistribution rights means that they will cover any expenses for the patents so that anyone can redistribute it.
It doesn't mean it isn't open source, it's MIT licensed.
What I don't quite understand is - how is all this possible? What resources does Fluendo have that Redhat, Canonical or Novell don't, that they can provide MP3 support for free for everyone?
RE[2]: oh, not binary actually
by progster on Fri 23rd Dec 2005 11:55
in reply to "RE: oh, not binary actually"
Member since:2005-07-27
>What I don't quite understand is - how is all this possible? What resources does Fluendo have that Redhat, Canonical or Novell don't, that they can provide MP3 support for free for everyone?
I second that, if it was "this easy", why didn't the big players do it? Surely, they have the money...
Member since:
Member since:
Actually, I should have read all of this first. Seems it's not binary-only. But still, "redistribution rights" are not Free Software, and there are a lot more distros out there than just Ubuntu and Fedora. This seems like more of a surrender than a victory. Luckily OGG is better than MP3 anyway