MP3 support in Linux distros?

[Luke-Jr]

On Saturday 12 November 2005 23:27, Leo Mauler wrote:
> Someone on another forum lambasted my suggestion that the XviD video codec
> would play on any Linux machine by saying that most distros didn't come with
> MP3 support, making a lot of XviD videos play in Linux with no sound.

XviD is not MP3. Generally, XviD is paired up with Vorbis, so it's not even a 
safe assumption that an XviD encoded video would use MP3... so the whole 
debate is irrelevant to your suggestion. Of course, I wouldn't suggest XviD-- 
ffmpeg's MP4 encoder is better.

> I went looking and of course he's right, Debian and Ubuntu don't have it for
> obvious licensing reasons, Redhat pulled support for MP3 back in version 8.0
> and never put it back.  Mandriva still includes support for MP3s.

I think the lack of MP3 support is more of a lecture on using Vorbis instead 
of MP3 than anything else.

> What exactly is the official policy on MP3s?  Is there an unwritten policy
> thats sort of <nudge, nudge, wink, wink> regarding allowing free software
> MP3 decoders/encoders?

I think there's a written licensing policy that MP3 is licensed for any 
non-commercial use.