Sounds like what we used to go through years ago with sound editors that had to have a separate button for downloading and inserting the MP3 encoder because the Fraunhofer license prohibited it from being directly distributed with the software.

This is still the case in Audacity... doesn't rip mp3's out the box.

Sure it does, it just always relied on external encoders.

I use audacity for recording vinyl occasionally, but for CD audio I have a bunch of cli scripts. Much easier.

If those external encoders are there. That’s the “non-free” checkbox / package in Linux.

No, with MP3 the encoders/decoders source code was always available in the normal source code repositories (e.g. FFMPEG) - the problem was just with binary distributions.

Post the patch in a country that doesn't care? I remember OpenBSD used to do something similar with encryption to get around US laws.

I think Canonical did this with codecs for a long time too, behind a prompt

Linux mint didn't need to ask due to being released from France, where software patents did not apply.