Why Basic installation of Ubuntu doesn't have codecs installed?

[Scott Abbey]

On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 18:49 +0530, Asha Rose wrote:
> Is there any way to include the codecs with the players so that it
> will come with the basic ubuntu installations. Almost all other things
> they require are coming with ubuntu basic installations.

Unfortunately, this is much more complicated than it seems. Codecs are
nearly all patented in some way or another. While this is not an issue
in many parts of the world (that don't have software patents), in other
parts (the United States) distributing the codecs is technically illegal
without paying a license fee. This is why the codecs don't come
installed by default, and there's really nothing that can be done about
it by Ubuntu.

It's a shame, but it's what we have to deal with.

-- 
Scott Abbey <scott at eotr.net>