On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:50:52 -0500
"Eric S. Raymond" <esr(a)thyrsus.com> wrote:
Let's start with the basics. For a consumer OS to be unable to
play
MP3s and handle podcasts is just plain not acceptable, not in the
world after iTunes. Red Hat/Fedora's duck-and-cover on this would be
understandable if the Fraunhofer patents blocked decoders, but
Fraunhofer itself has only dunned for royalties on *encoders* -- thus
Red Hat/Fedora has ceded to Fraunhofer rights it has never claimed.
Hmmm, well that's interesting. So it should be possible to include
an open source mp3 decoder like Underbit's MAD. [1]
I know at least one fairly influential kernel developer who threw
out
Red Hat/Fedora in disgust over this. When he asked me straight up how
I could defend what he bluntly called 'corporate cowardice', I didn't
feel like I had a good answer. And I still don't. In return for all
the free development work they get, it does seem to me that it's part
of Red Hat's job to shoulder risks like these -- and that Red Hat
hasn't held up its end.
Well the justification is rather simple. We're not trying to develop
a system to take over the world, we're trying to develop the best
_open-source_ system possible. It's not a religious issue or
idealism, it's simply the goal of the Fedora project. Of course,
some people don't care a whit about open source in which case, why
the hell would they be using Fedora?
Sean
[1]
http://www.underbit.com/products/mad