fedora and mp3

[pongscript]

fedora is good but about the mp3 support it sucks a lot redhat and fedora should bring back the mp3 support ... because most of user like to play music while doing their stuff.. and in this cases i have a lot of mp3... so any of you guys know where to find one of player that support any type of mp3...or any player which have wide range of sound format support....
linux is the best....bye the way the only way i can play music is using flash...in windows, i import file into flash and publish it into swf format then copy file to linux and from there ill be happily playing my music,.... but as yu can see. im hoping that there is anyway that i can play mp3 directly from any player of linux....

[Dolda2000]

Yeah, now that Fedora is an open source project, I fail to see why they haven't brought back MP3 support.

It's really easy to just add, though. See http://www.fedorafaq.org/, questions 13, 14 and 15 in the "Problems and Their Solutions" section.

[jens]

Yeah, now that Fedora is an open source project, I fail to see why they haven't brought back MP3 support.

Well...
cause it never had anything to do with OSS.
Adding MP3 support would make it illegal to distribute Fedora for commercial end use (We use it at work as well ).
It's only legal for home use.
See:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/enduser.html

[techieMoe]

I believe it's the same kind of deal for MPG movie support, for which FC3 does not have out-of-the-box support.

Considering Fedora is a "community" distro, I agree with Dolda. Just add a provision that this is for home use only and add these in. How hard is that? It doesn't violate the GPL, since the additions in question aren't GPL to begin with.

[Dolda2000]

There's nothing illegal with MP3 decoding support. The only thing that is patented about MP3 is the encoding supoprt.

[jens]

There's nothing illegal with MP3 decoding support. The only thing that is patented about MP3 is the encoding supoprt.

Like the license sais: only for home use.
Using it on a public/commercial place is allways considered as commercial.
In that case the the MP3 decoding is used for commercial aspects and therefor illegal.

[Dolda2000]

I'm sorry if I'm being blind, but I can't find anything in that license that says that the decoder can only be used for home use. I can only see that you can't distribute MP3 content except for home use, which is, of course, an entirely different thing.

[raublekick]

I think the issue is that there is a patent/copyright (or something along those lines) on the mp3 decoder itself, not the distribution of mp3s/copyrighted material. Of course, the patent holders have said they won't go after any GNU/Opensource Linux stuff, so there still is no reason not to include it.

[jens]

I'm sorry if I'm being blind, but I can't find anything in that license that says that the decoder can only be used for home use. I can only see that you can't distribute MP3 content except for home use, which is, of course, an entirely different thing.

Electronic Music Distribution / Broadcasting / Streaming

Commercial (i.e., revenue-generating) use of mp3/mp3PRO in broadcast systems (terrestrial, satellite, cable and/or other distribution channels), streaming applications (via Internet, intranets and/or other networks), other content distribution systems (pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications and the like) or use of mp3/mp3PRO on physical media (compact discs, digital versatile discs, semiconductor chips, hard drives, memory cards and the like).
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html

[Dolda2000]

Oh, that's bad. I had no idea -- I always thought it was just MP3 encoders that were patented.

That's yet another reason for people to use OGG/Vorbis instead, then.