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Currently, Debian does distribute Mono, VLC and ffmpeg, I'm not aware of the codecs you speak of.

(Oh, and I do use Debian, five days a week, but I don't see how that's relevant to my question.)

They didn't - last I knew - distribute LAME or other MP3 encoders. I think the patent enforcement situation has changed since that call was originally made, but earlier (late 90's, early 2000's), the patent owners were enforcing patents for encoders but not decoders.

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