On Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 11:34:03AM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: > * William Ballard: > > > On Sun, Dec 26, 2004 at 07:04:22PM -0800, james wrote: > >> Why can't lame be packaged in the non-free section? > > > > It's patent-encumbered; all mp3 software is. > > Yet mpg321 is in main. This comes from the misunderstanding that no > royalties are required for decoders (as opposed to encoders). This is > not true, though. Fraunhoffer only have patents on encoders, not decoders. They can't charge you for decoders unless you're using their encoding patents. (MPEG audio decoding is trivial and almost certainly not patentable) -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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