About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora."
Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
I'm slightly suspicious as to the authenticity of the tweet because yesterday @spotrh tweeted: "I'm going to stay off social media for the foreseeable future. If you need me, you know how to find me."
There are MP3-related US patents with expirations in September 2015, February 2017, April 2017, and December 2017, and some people argue that the last one affecting decoding may have been the one that expired in September 2015, but I don't know of anything that changed in 2016.
On 10 November 2016 at 16:55, Eric Smith spacewar@gmail.com wrote:
About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora."
Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2016/11/10/mp3-support-now-coming-to-fedora-w...
I'm slightly suspicious as to the authenticity of the tweet because yesterday @spotrh tweeted: "I'm going to stay off social media for the foreseeable future. If you need me, you know how to find me."
There are MP3-related US patents with expirations in September 2015, February 2017, April 2017, and December 2017, and some people argue that the last one affecting decoding may have been the one that expired in September 2015, but I don't know of anything that changed in 2016.
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On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 November 2016 at 16:55, Eric Smith spacewar@gmail.com wrote:
About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora." Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2016/11/10/mp3-support- now-coming-to-fedora-workstation-25/
Thanks for the link. Howver, after reading that article I still don't understand what has actually changed with regard to the legal status of MP3 decoding. Has the legal status changed for all MP3 audio decoders, or is it something specific to the mpeg123 library?
On 10 November 2016 at 17:06, Eric Smith spacewar@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 November 2016 at 16:55, Eric Smith spacewar@gmail.com wrote:
About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora." Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2016/11/10/mp3-support-now-coming-to-fedora-w...
Thanks for the link. Howver, after reading that article I still don't understand what has actually changed with regard to the legal status of MP3 decoding. Has the legal status changed for all MP3 audio decoders, or is it something specific to the mpeg123 library?
No idea myself. I hit send accidently before writing the line that I don't know what has changed but that was probably Spot versus a fake tweet.
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Eric Smith spacewar@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 November 2016 at 16:55, Eric Smith spacewar@gmail.com wrote:
About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora." Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2016/11/10/mp3-support-now-coming-to-fedora-w...
Thanks for the link. Howver, after reading that article I still don't understand what has actually changed with regard to the legal status of MP3 decoding. Has the legal status changed for all MP3 audio decoders, or is it something specific to the mpeg123 library?
You will not get specific legal answers to your questions surrounding this beyond what has already been said in public. There are only a handful of lawyers on this list and they cannot give you what could be construed as legal advice.
At the moment, mpeg123 is the approved decoder for Fedora. The tweet from Spot was genuine. The blog post from Christian likewise.
josh
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
You will not get specific legal answers to your questions surrounding this beyond what has already been said in public. There are only a handful of lawyers on this list and they cannot give you what could be construed as legal advice.
In the past Fedora has been willing to explain why MP3 decoders are NOT acceptable in Fedora. I have a really hard time believing that an explanation as to why that is no longer true cannot be provided, possibly with a suitable disclaimer. I'm not asking for a blanket statement that MP3 decoders are now completely unencumbered and that someone can do whatever the hell they want with them. I'm only asking what changed.
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 07:43:41PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
You will not get specific legal answers to your questions surrounding this beyond what has already been said in public. There are only a handful of lawyers on this list and they cannot give you what could be construed as legal advice.
At the moment, mpeg123 is the approved decoder for Fedora. The tweet from Spot was genuine. The blog post from Christian likewise.
And there are no shady backroom deals involved that might grant rights to Fedora that do not necessarily apply to Fedora's downstreams?
I certainly wouldn't have felt the need to ask something like this a few years ago, but nowadays I guess everything is possible.
Thanks, Lars
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 05:06:01AM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
And there are no shady backroom deals involved that might grant rights to Fedora that do not necessarily apply to Fedora's downstreams?
There are no backroom deals, shady or otherwise. We don't do things like that.
I certainly wouldn't have felt the need to ask something like this a few years ago, but nowadays I guess everything is possible.
Lars, I'm curious. What has happened that has made you lose trust?
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 8:13 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 05:06:01AM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
And there are no shady backroom deals involved that might grant rights to Fedora that do not necessarily apply to Fedora's downstreams?
There are no backroom deals, shady or otherwise. We don't do things like that.
To back that up, if there was a backroom deal such as you suggested where downstream rights were not retained, that would mean users would need to agree to some sort of end-user agreement before the functionality was accessible to them. It would go counter to how Fedora is distributed and counter to the norms of our community. There is no such agreement required or being asked for in this situation.
I certainly wouldn't have felt the need to ask something like this a few years ago, but nowadays I guess everything is possible.
Lars, I'm curious. What has happened that has made you lose trust?
I read that more as "the world continues to go insane" rather than losing specific trust in Fedora as a project. Though if it is specifically Fedora, I wonder as well.
josh
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 08:13:54AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 05:06:01AM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
And there are no shady backroom deals involved that might grant rights to Fedora that do not necessarily apply to Fedora's downstreams?
There are no backroom deals, shady or otherwise. We don't do things like that.
Thanks, Matthew. That's good to hear.
I certainly wouldn't have felt the need to ask something like this a few years ago, but nowadays I guess everything is possible.
Lars, I'm curious. What has happened that has made you lose trust?
While I like Josh's interpretation of the world continuing to go insane, there's indeed a general perception on my part that things once considered foundational to Fedora no longer are.
The handling of so-called "3rd party software" (proprietary software, that is) is one thing I consider especially creepy. If last month's proposal goes through, Fedora's package management tools will soon advertise the installation of software that is accompanied by fierce anti-reverse engineering terms and where the act of trying to understand the inner workings of the software is subject to draconian DMCA-like legislation in most parts of the world. That's a big thing and not something you'd ever expect from the "old" Fedora.
A part of the community seems hell-bent on getting some of the conveniences afforded by proprietary software into Fedora. That was always the case, more or less, and is actually a good thing that can make Fedora better. Lately though, my perception is that it became more acceptable to take shortcuts instead of doing the hard work to arrive at a proper solution. Rather than investing lots of work to implement solid free hardware drivers, why not just ship the vendor driver? Packaging software is hard, just go and dump your dev environment into a Flatpak! A bit pointed perhaps, but I guess you know what I mean.
That, together with an attitude shown on mailing lists which I don't think is that badly mischaracterized by "if it's not Workstation, fsck them", led me to the point where I was no longer ready to categorically rule out the possibility that in the case of MP3 support, too, a Workstation-specific solution might be deemed acceptable. Still unlikely, but not totally impossible, like a few years ago.
Thanks, Lars
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 5:12 AM, Lars Seipel lars.seipel@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 08:13:54AM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 05:06:01AM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
And there are no shady backroom deals involved that might grant rights to Fedora that do not necessarily apply to Fedora's downstreams?
There are no backroom deals, shady or otherwise. We don't do things like that.
Thanks, Matthew. That's good to hear.
I certainly wouldn't have felt the need to ask something like this a few years ago, but nowadays I guess everything is possible.
Lars, I'm curious. What has happened that has made you lose trust?
While I like Josh's interpretation of the world continuing to go insane, there's indeed a general perception on my part that things once considered foundational to Fedora no longer are.
The handling of so-called "3rd party software" (proprietary software, that is) is one thing I consider especially creepy. If last month's proposal goes through, Fedora's package management tools will soon advertise the installation of software that is accompanied by fierce anti-reverse engineering terms and where the act of trying to understand the inner workings of the software is subject to draconian DMCA-like legislation in most parts of the world. That's a big thing and not something you'd ever expect from the "old" Fedora.
It's an experiment meant to see if it grows the user base, and in turn produces more contributors. It does seem somewhat at odds with our Foundations, but only slightly. The software was always there and always usable (and based on the limited data we had, already installed on the majority of installs). The efforts are to make it only less painful, not more acceptable at a project level.
A part of the community seems hell-bent on getting some of the conveniences afforded by proprietary software into Fedora. That was always the case, more or less, and is actually a good thing that can make Fedora better. Lately though, my perception is that it became more acceptable to take shortcuts instead of doing the hard work to arrive at a proper solution. Rather than investing lots of work to implement solid free hardware drivers, why not just ship the vendor driver? Packaging software is hard, just go and dump your dev environment into a Flatpak! A bit pointed perhaps, but I guess you know what I mean.
I'm not meaning to be dismissive of your concerns at all, because I agree with them in a large part. However, what continues to happen is that people make calls for putting in hard work, but do not or cannot pitch in to do that work themselves. The project does actually have more people staffed to work on free drivers and more free software packaging, but if Fedora is going to continue to grow and succeed then efforts need to come from the entire multitude of our community.
That, together with an attitude shown on mailing lists which I don't think is that badly mischaracterized by "if it's not Workstation, fsck them", led me to the point where I was no longer ready to categorically rule out the possibility that in the case of MP3 support, too, a Workstation-specific solution might be deemed acceptable. Still unlikely, but not totally impossible, like a few years ago.
It's not Workstation specific. Your concern there is interesting though, and it might be worth continue a thread on a wider list.
josh
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 03:06:33PM -0700, Eric Smith wrote:
Thanks for the link. Howver, after reading that article I still don't understand what has actually changed with regard to the legal status of MP3 decoding. Has the legal status changed for all MP3 audio decoders, or is it something specific to the mpeg123 library?
It is not specific to the mpeg123 library.
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 02:55:06PM -0700, Eric Smith wrote:
About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora." Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
This is true and Spot and Christian's statements are accurate. We are cleared to ship mp3 _decoding_ but not encoding.
I'm sorry this announcement wasn't coordinated a little better. I think everyone (understandably) got very excited.
There are MP3-related US patents with expirations in September 2015, February 2017, April 2017, and December 2017, and some people argue that the last one affecting decoding may have been the one that expired in September 2015, but I don't know of anything that changed in 2016.
Unfortuantely, I can't comment on the details.
"MM" == Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org writes:
MM> Unfortuantely, I can't comment on the details.
That's fine, but what's important is that _someone_ comment on the details, before the updated packages with mp3 decoding arrive at the mirrors and, subsequently, user desktops.
- J<
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 11:34:36AM -0600, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
That's fine, but what's important is that _someone_ comment on the details, before the updated packages with mp3 decoding arrive at the mirrors and, subsequently, user desktops.
Are there details needed beyond https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org/... ?
"Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time."
On 11/10/2016 04:55 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
About three hours ago on Twitter @spotrh tweeted: "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora."
Is this true? If so, could we have a bit more detail?
I'm slightly suspicious as to the authenticity of the tweet because yesterday @spotrh tweeted: "I'm going to stay off social media for the foreseeable future. If you need me, you know how to find me."
Sorry. It was not my intent to be cryptic. I wrote that specific tweet because I had become angry and frustrated with the political situation in the United States, and rather than writing something I might later regret, I opted out of social media... but I had also promised to help spread awareness of the MP3 change in Fedora, so I came back for that.
We cannot comment on specific patents, not now, not ever. Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time.
I hope this helps.
~tom
== Red Hat
On 2016-11-11 08:43, Tom Callaway wrote:
We cannot comment on specific patents, not now, not ever. Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time.
I hope this helps.
To a degree. Could we get a confirmation that the following software could therefore be added, should a maintainer be so interested:
gst-fluendo-mp3: http://core.fluendo.com/gstreamer/src/gst-fluendo-mp3/ libmad: http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/
Also, for the sake of clarity, what is the status of:
* MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) encoding (e.g. twolame)? * MPEG-1 video decoding (e.g. smpeg, which also includes MP3 decoding)?
On 2016-11-11 13:15, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
On 2016-11-11 08:43, Tom Callaway wrote:
We cannot comment on specific patents, not now, not ever. Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time.
I hope this helps.
To a degree. Could we get a confirmation that the following software could therefore be added, should a maintainer be so interested:
gst-fluendo-mp3: http://core.fluendo.com/gstreamer/src/gst-fluendo-mp3/ libmad: http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/
Also, for the sake of clarity, what is the status of:
- MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) encoding (e.g. twolame)?
- MPEG-1 video decoding (e.g. smpeg, which also includes MP3 decoding)?
Oh, and also:
* MPEG-2 video decoding (e.g. libmpeg2)?
On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 01:32:10PM -0600, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
Oh, and also:
- MPEG-2 video decoding (e.g. libmpeg2)?
The statement we have been given says nothing about that.
On 11/11/2016 02:32 PM, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
- MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) encoding (e.g. twolame)?
- MPEG-1 video decoding (e.g. smpeg, which also includes MP3 decoding)?
Oh, and also:
- MPEG-2 video decoding (e.g. libmpeg2)?
There is no change in these areas at this time. Our process for reviewing the legal concerns of specific technologies is an ongoing one.
~tom
== Red Hat
-
Eric Smith -
Jason L Tibbitts III -
Josh Boyer -
Lars Seipel -
Matthew Miller -
Stephen John Smoogen -
Tom Callaway -
Yaakov Selkowitz