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Have the patents for H.264 MPEG-4 AVC expired yet?
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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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On distros like Debian, openSUSE and Fedora, you need to enable a separate repository, if you want icky software, like proprietary drivers or patented codecs. In particular, you can't watch MP4 videos. So, PeerTube and YouTube work, but if a webpage is hosting its own videos, or you happen to acquire a video file in some other fashion, there's a good chance that it's an MP4 file and you can't look at it.
I'm hoping that when these patents expire, that it's possible to ship the MP4 codecs directly, and then at least for me, that would currently result in not needing to deal with these separate repos.
When I first switched to Linux, I was nonplussed at why many videos didn't work. It ended up being a positive learning experience, but it certainly would be nice if the codecs could be shipped directly, as you say.