Sigh. "Everyone else does it" is not a valid legal
defense.
That's not what I meant. I wasn't meaning that since everyone else has
support that Fedora should also based completely on that fact. My point
was that there are other distro's that -are- selling their products with
MP3 support, yet Fedora does not, and it's freely available... not sold.
If you use
the things in the MP3 patent for commercial use, you are required to pay
royalties. The GPL doesn't allow restrictions on use via patents. All
"GPL" MP3 software is not GPL compatible.
But Fedora is not a commercial product... it isn't "revenue-generating",
as the company holding these patents likes to put it. Why should they
expect for a company, or developer, to pay royalty licensing fees for a
product that isn't sold?
I'm sorry, let's just drop this, I don't mean to drag this into the ground
any further, it's just a problem that seems to cause people to
consistantly ask for help on. Perhaps there should be a notice on the
Fedora site about this, howtos or links to howtos and rpms, etc... (that
is if there isn't one already...)