I am intending to package LAME (mp3 encoder). There are some patent
limitations on lame's use in Germany/USA so I am proposing
Section: non-free/sound.
Mark
> http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/unable-to-package
>
> AFAIK, this is not about software using Fraunhofer's code, it's about
> MP3 encoders.
Lame does not contain any of the Fraunhofer Institute code, the lame source
code is fully GPL. Other mp3 encoders, refered to at wnpp/unable-to-package
are based on the Fraunhofer Institute code. However, personal and
commercial use of compiled versions of LAME (or any other mp3 encoder)
requires a patent license in some countries.
Which qualifies for non-free in Debian as the patent is only approved in
Germany and USA.
Mark
From: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
Following the great history of GNU naming, LAME originally stood for LAME
Ain't an Mp3 Encoder. LAME started life as a GPL'd patch against the
dist10 ISO demonstration source, and thus was incapable of producing an mp3
stream or even being compiled by itself. But in May 2000, the last
remnants of the ISO source code were replaced, and now LAME is the source
code for a fully GPL'd MP3 encoder, with speed and quality to rival all
commercial competitors.
Personal and commercial use of compiled versions of LAME (or any other mp3
encoder) requires a patent license in some countries.
[...]
Personal and commercial use of compiled versions of LAME (or any other mp3
encoder) requires a patent license in some countries.
From http://www.mp3-tech.org/patents.html
Fraunhofer Institute has been the main developer of MPEG audio Layer-3, and
the MP3 standard that has been approved is mainly based on its work, which
Fraunhofer has protected with a patent. It is noticeable that this patent
has been approved in 1989 in Germany and in 1996 in the USA (so, after the
establishment of the MP3 standard) under the number 5,579,430, but not in
other countries. THOMSOM claims to possess patents related to MP3 too, but I
did not find anyone.
LAME 3.xx
LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder
http://www.sulaco.org/mp3
October 1999
Originally developed by Mike Cheng (www.uq.net.au/~zzmcheng). Now
maintained by Mark Taylor (www.sulaco.org/mp3).
This code is distributed under the GNU LESSER PUBLIC LICENSE
(LGPL, see www.gnu.org) with the following modification:
1. If you determine that distribution of LAME requires a patent license,
and you obtain a patent license, you may distribute LAME even though
redistribution of LAME may also require a patent license.
2. You agree not to enforce any patent claims for any aspect of
MPEG audio compression, or any other techniques contained in
the LAME source code.
============================================================================
see the file "INSTALL" for installation (compiling) instructions.
see the file "USAGE" for the most up-to-date guide to the command line options.
see the file "LICENSE" for details on how to use LAME in non-GPL programs.
see the file "HACKING" for some general codeing guidelines
There is HTML documentation and a man page in the doc directory.
The HTML docs were contributed by Gabriel Bouvigne (www.mp3tech.org).
See www.mp3tech.org for more audio compression information and links.
============================================================================
LAME uses the MPGLIB decoding engine, from the
MPG123 package, written by: Michael Hipp (www.mpg123.de) MPGLIB is
released under the GPL, while MPG123 is released under a more
restrictive agreement.
Various components are:
Copyrights (c) 1999 by Mark Taylor: new psy-model, quantization and bit allocation
Copyrights (c) 1998 by Michael Cheng: new transforms and many other improvements
Copyrights (c) 1995,1996,1997 by Michael Hipp: mpglib
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