Is there an official Mozilla/Xiph taskforce (legal & technical) tracking the status of this? I believe Mozilla is now supporting mp3 (along with AAC and H.264) wherever possible via hardware (and now this Cisco thing) but obviously shipping your own open source code is better in many ways (e.g. support across all supported platforms) whenever possible.
It also sets a precedent and you can't trust the patent holders to act in anything other than their own cartel's interest (the last time I checked H.264 "essential" patents were due to last an extra year than the previous time I looked) so it seems like something Mozilla and Xiph might be ideally placed to sort out (perhaps in conjunction with FSF/Debian/Google and other interested parties). Obviously Xiph has Vorbis and Opus which are both technically superior, but the installed base of MP3 is massive.
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Date: 2013-11-06 12:35 pm (UTC)It also sets a precedent and you can't trust the patent holders to act in anything other than their own cartel's interest (the last time I checked H.264 "essential" patents were due to last an extra year than the previous time I looked) so it seems like something Mozilla and Xiph might be ideally placed to sort out (perhaps in conjunction with FSF/Debian/Google and other interested parties). Obviously Xiph has Vorbis and Opus which are both technically superior, but the installed base of MP3 is massive.