Freespire's Google ads: "What is Ubuntu Missing?"

[James "Doc" Livingston]

On Sat, 2006-09-23 at 14:43 -0700, Daniel Robitaille wrote:
> To tell you the truth I'm not losing any sleep over all this :)  I have
> some of these gstreamer packages installed, and I can listen to mp3
> files whenever I need to.   But I was just curious if I have should
> bothered installing that fluendo mp3 package in Ubnutu, and if I would
> have gained anything by doing so, mostly from a technical point of view.
> I guess not :)

In summary: if you live somewhere that software patent apply, and you
care about using software that has the correct patent licences, install
the Fluendo one. If you don't care, or live somewhere without software
patents, install either but the MAD plugin is slightly better.


In more detail:

There isn't any inherent difference from a technical point of view, they
are both MPEG audio layer 3 decoders. I've heard that the Fluendo plugin
isn't quite as efficient because it doesn't have some of the
optimisations the mad plugin does - but on any machine vaguely recent it
shouldn't make a difference.

If you live somewhere that software patents don't apply, that's the end
of it (so you'd usually install the mad plugin). If you live somewhere
with software patents, the official Fleundo build of the plugin, or one
by someone who has signed the necessary contract, will be fully patent
licenced.


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston
-- 
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence. -- Jeremy S. Anderson