You know what? Not just Reed-Solomon codes, but Information Theory is cool.
People don't realise how ubiquitous different forms of encoding schemes are (I am leaving out compression/decompression schemes altogether here, but it has always amazed me as to what profound impact Information Theory has, and yet it is so out of the way):
Are any of the ones that are better than Reed-Solomon either open-source or otherwise out of patent protection yet? A library I could play with, perhaps? (would love to get my hands on a Raptor or Turbo implementation)
"Better than Reed-Solomon" depends on what you mean. R-S is an optimal erasure code and for storage applications, erasure code is usually what is desired.
In terms of turbo codes, I think the CCSDS turbo code is out of patent, at least 5,446,747 has been expired for over 5 years.
People don't realise how ubiquitous different forms of encoding schemes are (I am leaving out compression/decompression schemes altogether here, but it has always amazed me as to what profound impact Information Theory has, and yet it is so out of the way):
Forward error-correction codes (FEC) at L2: IBM's elegant 8b/10b encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8b/10b_encoding used in pre-10g era Ethernet, and its successor 64b/66b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64b/66b_encoding used in post-10g era Ethernet / Infiniband / RoCE, and the sister 128b/132b encoding used by PCI-e 3 and USB 3 standards.
Linear error-correcting codes (LEC) for Volatile Memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code
FEC for HD Voice Transmission over Cellular Networks: AMR used in 3G and VoIP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_code... and AMR WB for VoLTE aka HD Voice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_Wideband
Fountain Codes for Digital TV on Mobile (DVB-H): Qualcomm's Raptors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_code
Turbo Codes for 3G/4G Connectivity (OFDM), Satellite communication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_code
Optimal Erasure Coding (for data at rest, and for Mobile TV, and for 3G/4G): Reed-Solomon and its variants are a clear winner here (used by dropbox https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/07/pocket-watch/ and rumored to have been used by S3 https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/06/erasure-coding-and... )
Upcoming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-density_parity-check_code LDPC codes are recommended for use by data-channel in 5G replacing Reed-Solomon whilst Polar Codes are adopted for the control-channel in 5G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_code_(coding_theory)
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Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code