[COLUG] [No] MPEG video in RHEL5: Patents

[jep200404]

"Scott Merrill" wrote:

> I'm a bit surprised to find that MPEG video support appears to be
> completely absent from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 [RHEL5] Desktop.

Not only am I not surprised to find that RHEL5 does not have MPEG 
support, I expect RHEL5 to not have MPEG support, since Red Hat 
tries to be the pure open source play, and since MPEG is 
encumbered with patents, MPEG can not be open source 
(or at least not GPL). 

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-2#Patent_holders

I don't know which version of MPEG you're looking for support for, 
but I think you'll find patents for at least the versions of MPEG 
that you want support for. 

Jim