Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Well other posts in this thread indicate that at best, the _threat_ of patents being enforced against MP3 decoders is very real. At worst, it is already not possible (though it looks like there are plenty of GPL programs on sourceforge today offering MP3 playback.
I don't think that's true. Debian's legal team is pretty conservative (read: paranoid) on these matters, and Debian currently includes mp3-playback software in the main distribution (package 'xmms', among others). Mp3-encoding software is not part of Debian due to patent issues, but playback software is, so it seems their legal team has determined there aren't any problems with playback.
-Mark