Hi, I have just read the discussion about patents and the "Debian Position on Software Patents" [1]
The Debian project includes a number of patent-encumbered Multimedia codecs (Audio+Video, at least decoders), namely MP3 and MPEG4. Potential packages, that need review: gstreamer[version]-plugins-ugly libxine1-ffmpeg libavcodec[version] libavformat[version] vlc chromium-browser libk3b6-extracodecs mencoder ...anything else, that I missed. How-to reproduce: 1. Install fresh Debian system, with several Multimedia Players, such as "GNOME Totem", "KDE Kaffeine", "VLC". 2. Play MPEG4 and MP3 in Kaffeine 3. Play MPEG4 and MP3 in VLC 4. Compare this to Red Hat or SUSE What happens ? Debian 6.0 "squeeze" will play both MPEG4 and MP3 files out-of-the-box, by default. (using *only* main repository packages) Red Hat (both RHEL and Fedora) and SUSE will *not* play those files, until the user manually installs the codecs from unofficial repository. Red Hat and SUSE will only play OGG Vorbis, Theora and WebM codecs out-of-the-box. I don't know what to do in this situation, few possibilities: -"do nothing" -move patent-encumbered codecs into "non-free" repo ? Or external repo? [1] http://www.debian.org/legal/patent -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov" Debian User. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAOJ6w=gsn7zn5w+shk9xe7or0auubpjojcyqba__hdtprrt...@mail.gmail.com
