mpg123 not included, why?

[Brandon Vincent]

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 4:50 AM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
> and that only MP3 *encoding* was actively pursued by the Fraunhoffer
> Insitute and assorted MP3 cartels.

MP3 encoding is indeed what Fraunhofer IIS has primarily focused on in
the past. The problem is that the decoding technology is also patented
[1]. I believe all of the major MP3 patents have expired in the
European Union, but in the United States, the last of the patents will
not expire until December 30, 2017.

The problem is that Fraunhofer IIS has gone after MP3 decoding
software in the past [2]. While they haven't recently attempted
litigation against MP3 decoders (to my knowledge), LGPL software like
mpg123 is in violation of its license by infringing upon a patent [3].

The problem is that all of this is very open to interpretation (e.g.
IBM held a patent for the concept of the progress bar until 2011).
When this happens, the simplest solution is to exclude a package or
library from the Fedora Project.

I'll direct you to the wonderful Xiph.Org Foundation (home of Vorbis,
FLAC, and Theora) as a conclusion [4].

[1] http://mp3licensing.com/help/developers.html#55
[2] https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/1027
[3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.en.html
[4] http://xiph.org/