[indiana-discuss] should SUNWgnome-media-mp3 be empty?

[Brian Cameron]

Glenn:

>> Am I diagnosing things wrong, or is something broken here?  I looked for 
>> known bugs, but didn't find any.
> 
> It's not a bug.  MP3 support was pulled at some point in Nevada due to
> licensing/redistributability issues I believe.

Note that MP3 decoding support has only been pulled from GStreamer-based
applications, not Solaris in general.  While GStreamer-based programs do
not support MP3 out-of-the-box, you will find that other media programs
(such as the Java Media Player) do support MP3 out-of-the-box.

The reason that Sun does not ship MP3 with GStreamer is because it would
violate the distribution terms of the GPL.  Some GPL programs link
against GStreamer.  These include: totem, rhythmbox, sound-juicer,
and (soon) Songbird.  Of these programs, all of them except sound-juicer
have a GPL exception clause which allows them to be distributed with
non-free GStreamer codecs (like the MP3 decoder plugin).

We need to do something to replace sound-juicer with something that has
better licensing, or find a CD ripper/playback tool which does not use
GStreamer, or encourage the sound-juicer project to adopt a similar
license exception.  When that is done, Sun will start shipping the MP3
decoder with GStreamer.

> You need to grab the free MP3 plugin from fluendo.
> 
> https://shop.fluendo.com/

In the meanwhile, you have to do this, yes.

Brian