-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
On Thu, 2017-04-06 at 11:23 +0200, tsuroerusu@gmail.com wrote:
Earlier today, I recalled that the final US patents covering the MP3 were due to expire this year, and I did a quick Google search, and found this list at OSNews (Scroll down to get the table): http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_MP3_MPEG-2 _H_264/
It also links to other lists that point to the same date, the 16th of April 2017, for the final US patent related to the MP3 format to expire.
I would think that this could allow for Leap 42.3 to legally include libmad, and thereby enable full MP3 support across the distribution without any non-free code (Like Fluendo GStreamer plugins etc.).
I must confess I rarely hang out on the mailing lists, but I just thought I would put this idea out there, since we are a good few months away from the release of 42.3, and if I happened to be correct it could be very useful to FINALLY have libmad included in the distribution's own package set. This is especially true since VLC itself is actually included.
Hello
Most of mp3 related packages are already on way to Factory and can be included in next Leap (once they are accepted to Factory) - in other words mentioned patent expiration is of course known to maintainers of relevant packages :)
Cheers
Martin