[TriLUG] RH8 and Evolution Problem

Kevin Sonney alchemist at darkcanvas.com
Sat Oct 5 16:58:21 EDT 2002


On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 04:48:26PM -0400, Ken Mink spoke thusly:
> P.S. Someone at RedHat needs to be bitch slapped for removing mp3
> support from xmms on rh8. After installing a new version of the OS, I
> wasn't expecting a lack of mp3 support to be the reason my mp3s wouldn't
> play. That one took a while to diagnose.

Then take it up with the lawyers. There are PATENT ISSUES with mp3
decoder inclusion. On distros prior to 8.0, the owner of said
patent didn't have an issue, and there's no clear statement that a
commercially released GNU/Linux Distro won't be forced to pay $.75 per
decoder shipped.

I thought there was enough warning in (a) the betas, (b) the readmes,
and (c) the OSS newsmedia, which covered these issues pretty heavily
at the time.

Me? I'm converting all my stuff to ogg, and that includes re-ripping
all my CDs. Ogg is free, and will continue to be free. Which is a good
thing.

Oh, and I'm not speaking for my employer. Yeah, I thought it was a
pain at first too. but in looking at the larger issue, I think they
did the right thing. 

And anyway, after hearing an ogg side by side with an mp3 of the same
track, ripped from the same cd on the same computer, well, I'll take
ogg. *grin*

-- 
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--         Kevin Sonney         --
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