On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Elton Woo wrote: >> Thanks for the link to the article. It sounds like the coverage was >> fairly in-line with my experiences with this beta. >> >> The mozilla phone calls make me wonder, for those that plan on upgrading >> only. I guess since it doesn't work well. They might be better off with >> the 1.3 or later browser versions. >> >> Jim > >I must say that I'm a rather disappointed the the status quo WRT MP3 >support in Red Hat 9 remains the same. Considering that both Mandrake >and SUSe are releasing their next versions with MP3 support in them... >(... unless I'm seriously mistaken about this!). Since the legal issues that resulted in the removal of MP3 support from Red Hat Linux 8.0 still exist, you can more or less expect that there will be no MP3 support in Red Hat Linux until there are no legal issues present which prevent Red Hat from shipping MP3 support. The GPL license does not permit software to contain elements which are covered by patents unless the patent owner has granted in writing, unrestricted rights to use the patented elements in the GPL licensed software without restrictions. For details of the exact wording, consult the GPL license and it should be clear. If it is still not clear, then consult a patent attourney. In some parts of the world, the MP3 patents may not be valid, and in those areas it may or may not satisfy the GPL requirements in those specific countries. It is also possible that some other Linux vendors simply are ignoring the GPL/patent clause and taking their chances. Anyone is free to take chances of course. In short, don't expect to see MP3 support in Red Hat Linux any time soon as the reasons that resulted in its removal still exist. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Phoebe-list mailing list Phoebe-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list