patents

[Alan McKinnon]

On Friday 31 March 2006 05:00, Chanchao wrote:

> I'm only asking a similar level of
> support in Ubuntu: Having the (a) included media player be able to
> play mp3.

Reasonable thing to ask for, the way to do it is this:

Get a letter from the mp3 patent holder which gives a permanent 
irrevocable right to anyone to implement the mp3 standard without 
payment of a license fee or signing of a contract.

The ONLY reason Ubuntu doesn't have default mp3 support is because 
no-one has that letter yet. We can bitch and moan all we want but the 
truth is that we don't include it because in many places there is a 
valid legal law that says we can't do it.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five