Why people are not switching to Fedora

[Peter Robinson]

>> hi
>> I agree with this but at the same time I disagree. I completely agree
>> that installing codecs should be easier. On the other hand, I'm
>> sympothetic to fedora's awkward position. If they made installing
>> these codecs easier or installed them by default, even though the
>> software to play them is open source, they could find themselves on
>> the bad end of an  riaa or mpaa lawsuit.
>
> Nope. Neither of those entities own codec patents.
> And no its not "impossible" to ship those codes in a legal way.
> If fedora/red hat would buy patent licenses they can legally
> distribute those codes *but* those licenses would not apply to remixes
> so anyone else basing his/her distro on fedora would have to either
> remove them or get a patent license.
> MP3 will expire soon anyway. So we'd only need AAC/H264 to be able to
> handle most videos out there.

And H.265, plus probably some of the Dobly ones for surround sound....
it's ongoing.