Ubuntu should support MP3 encoding and decoding out of the box because the patents have expired.
Fedora Workstation since version 26 (released in July 2017) includes out of the box MP3 decoding via the mpg123 library and GStreamer.
It was approved by Red Hat’s legal department.
In Ubuntu, MP3 support is now provided by the non-free gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3 from restricted-extras which is optional during the installation.
Hi @dalaa, the advice we have received from our legal team is that it’s not as clear cut as it may seem, and that we should not yet be shipping Free MP3 codecs.
We have a regular sync up with our legal team on this topic and as soon as we get the OK then we will move to a Free codec.
Cheers, Will
gstreamer upstream will be moving mp3 to the -good series in 1.14 (rough eta maybe this month)
“MP3 PATENTS HAVE EXPIRED!
mpg123 mp3 decoder -> good
LAME mp3 encoder -> good
twolame mp2 encoder -> good”
Slide 25 - https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/om_gstreamer/attachments/slides/2647/export/events/attachments/om_gstreamer/slides/2647/Tim_Muller___Whats_New_in_GStreamer___FOSDEM_2018.pdf
MPEG-2 patents expired recently as well…
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MPEG-2-Last-Patents-Expire
Raspberry Pi discussion - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=201449