On Friday 10 November 2006 17:37, Michael Kaye wrote:
> It's not included in Debian and Ubuntu because it supports formats
> that are covered by patents (such as MP3).
>
> This is both for ethical reasons (patents are a bad thing), and to
> protect them from the risk of prosecution and demand of royalties.
>
> Michael.
Ahem, for the sake of accuracy:
mplayer will be included in Debian Etch, see this faq for details:
http://people.debian.org/~mjr/legal/mplayer.html
Also, the whole world is not covered by US patent law.