I forward this to the cooker list. I wrote to Frauenhofer and their response is below. This does not fully answer our question as it does not address Open Source but commercially sold software decoders. BUT, it does say the licensing policy has not changed and since Mandrake has not been sued up till now, that should be a good indicator that Mandrake should continue the way it always has - that is to continue (as before) to INCLUDE software based Open Source MP3 Players in the distribution.
Hope this helps to calrify the issues involved. Regards, Jason Greenwood -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: MP3 Licensing Question Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 22:47:01 +0200 From: Stefan Geyersberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Fraunhofer IIS-A To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi, the following statement was sent to the Slash Dot.org Web site for clarification. It should be up within the next days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Steve Syatt SSA Public Relations for Thomson multimedia (the lower case is not a typo...) My Tel: (818) 501-0700 Statement from Thomson Multimedia, mp3 Licensing In a posting appearing Tuesday August 27, 2002 on the Web site 'slashdot.org,' an individual cited a change in the mp3 license fee structure of Thomson and Fraunhofer. The writer of the post apparently misread the mp3 licensing conditions, as Thomson's mp3 licensing policy has not experienced any change. To clarify, since the beginning of our mp3 licensing program in 1995, Thomson has never charged a per unit royalty for freely distributed software decoders. For commercially sold decoders - primarily hardware mp3 players - the per-unit royalty has always been in place since the beginning of the program. Therefore, there is no change in our licensing policy and we continue to believe that the royalty fees of .75 cents per mp3 player (on average selling over $200 dollars) has no measurable impact on the consumer experience. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jason Greenwood wrote: > Dear Sir/Miss, > > A war is raging in the Open Source Community regarding MP3 Players. In > particular, the inclusion of the XMMS MP3 Player Plugin in the > forthcoming Mandrake 9.0 Release. Is it required to obtain a license for > software based MP3 Players that are Open Source (Free)?? Your pages used > to address this but have been removed. Please clarify for all involved. > > As an OSS software user I hope that you make exemptions in your > licensing for Open Source Projects as improvements in the format are > returned to you in the form of source. As such you receive valuable > development input in place of royalty fees. I was not commissioned by > anyone to write this to you. I am asking on my own behalf and on behalf > of Open Source Software Users the world over. > > Kindest Regards, > > Jason Greenwood > >
