Patent-free software where it makes sense

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 19:59:05 +0200,
  Ahmad Samir <ahmadsamir3891 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>The funny thing about the MP3 patent expiring is that really MP3 is
>going away, and has been going away for some time now; AAC encoded
>audio in an MP4 container is becoming more prevalent these days, and
>of course AAC is another codec you can't legally add in a distro that
>resides in the u.s. .... so it looks like a race, one that Linux is
>losing unless users add 3rd party repos that can package those
>patent-encumbered codecs; 3rd party repos have a lower risk of getting
>sued, since they're individuals and suing them wouldn't bring in that
>much money anyway (you need to sue a big wealthy company to justify
>the lawyer hourly fees :)), of course IANAL, so don't take my views on
>legal matters to heart.

Opus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_%28codec%29) has become an 
important audio codec that doesn't have patent problems.