On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Mark H Weaver <m...@netris.org> wrote:
> David Hashe <david.ha...@dhashe.com> writes: > > > On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Amirouche Boubekki > > <amirou...@hypermove.net> wrote: > > > > I only tried to play mp3 and ogg. Ogg works. I did not try > > burning audio cds. > > I will try later today or tomorrow. > > > > > > mp3 support requires gst-plugins-ugly, which includes nonfree and > > patent-encumbered codecs. More information at > > http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/modules/gst-plugins-ugly.html > > There are MP3 decoders that are free software. We should be able to > support this, just like Debian does. What about the gst-libav package? > > > As a side note, it appears that we do package some patent-encumbered > > software, such as LAME, so I'm not sure what our stance is on software > > patents themselves. > > See the section on "Patents" in the GNU FSDG > <https://gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html>: > > It is effectively impossible for free software developers and > distributors to know whether or not a given piece of software > infringes any patents: there are too many of them, they vary from > country to country, they're often worded so as to make it hard to tell > what they do or don't cover, and it isn't easy to tell which ones are > valid. Therefore, we don't generally ask free system distributions to > exclude software because of possible threats from patents. On the > other hand, we also don't object if a distributor chooses to omit some > software in order to avoid patent risk. > > We can include free software in GNU Guix, even if it faces possible > patent threats in some countries. > > Mark > Thanks for clarifying. Besides patents, my other concern was licensing. Specifically, the page I linked about gst-plugins-ugly includes the following: The license on either the plug-ins or the supporting libraries might not be how we'd like. Rather vague, but a bit worrying. However, you're right that Debian includes it, as do Trisquel and Parabola (both free distributions), so I agree that this is probably something we can include. Thanks, David
