Hi, I have been concerned for a while about fdk-aac getting stuck in the NEW queue for its switch from non-free to free.
I believe the best path forward is to create a new source package for Fedora's fork of fdk-aac. Fedora's fork removes the newer HE (High Efficiency) and HEv2 profiles because of patent concerns that don't apply to the older profiles. Fedora names their project fdk-aac-free so I would use that as our source package name. I'm told that the HE and HEv2 profiles are only suitable for very low bitrates (64 kbit or lower). gnome-remote-desktop uses 96 kbit for its optional AAC audio support so it doesn't use those profiles anyway. There are two other Debian packages that could use fdk-aac, gst-plugins-bad1.0 and pipewire and I believe Fedora's fork is sufficient for them also. Once fdk-aac-free is accepted into main, I would file a removal bug for fdk-aac since nothing in Debian would be using it. Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
