On Wed, 2011-10-12 at 04:44 -0400, Martin Owens wrote: > On Tue, 2011-10-11 at 09:39 -0400, Rodney Dawes wrote: > > The Fluendo plug-in is the only fully legal MP3 codec implementation > > there is to use. > > You don't know that for sure Dobey, libmad has never gone to court and > it's status is a guess. Perhaps a very good guess, but a guess just the > same. Of course if we took the same actions for other free software with > patent issues we'd also mark the linux kernel as non-free and kick that > out too. *inconsistent*
Given that libmad is GPL and has not paid license fees to implement the MP3 codec, it is not legal. Whether or not you disagree with the validity of patents or not is irrelevant. Under the current laws, the Fluendo implementation is currently the only legal one in countries where patents hold any weight in the legal system. Let's not turn this thread into an argument about patent issues. > I didn't think Debian had issues with GPL libs though, that's new to me. As Colin mentioned, Debian doesn't necessarily (unless there is some conflict between the licensing of something using a GPL lib). But the upstream GStreamer mantra is that anything which depends on a GPL lib has to go in -bad/-ugly/-somethingelse and not -base, as GStreamer is LGPL, and GPL extensions to an LGPL library/application are hairy. So, those extensions are less cared for, but exist because someone wrote them, and therefore go in a separate source tree.
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