Am Son, 2003-05-11 um 15.49 schrieb Andrew Suffield: > On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 02:38:42PM +0200, Alexander Wirt wrote: > > as a part of my Application i looked at the mpg123 package and took also > > a look to mpg321. Inside of this analysis i took a look to the homepage > > of thompson. There is a pricing list for every decoder that is able to > > play mp3 files [1]. This means for every decoder program round about > > 0.75 $ for every copy of the decoder. I wasn't able to find any > > exception of this fee. > > Those are fees for people who are using their patents. Their patents > are on mp3 encoding, not decoding. We don't ship any mp3 encoders, > thusly we are not bound to follow their royalty scheme (and frankly, > it's highly dubious whether anybody is; people pay because they're > stupid and don't want to fight it in court). > Thats a point where I'm not sure. Thompson sayed they could get the fee, also for decoders. So I think if not removing, we should, at least, move any decoder to non-US. Far away from the US Law :) > > According to the DFSG this makes every mp3 decoder non-free or even > > undistributable. > > It doesn't, actually. Although it might make it non-distributable > under US law, and some other countries which honour the relevant > patents. As I said above.... alex -- Alexander "formorer" Wirt KeyID: BC7D020A EMail: formorer@formorer.de ICQ: 28651245 WWW: http://www.formorer.de Encrypted and Signed Email preferred.
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