Quoting Ben Woods <[email protected]> (from Wed, 03 May 2017 07:18:18 +0000):
"On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated." http://www.mp3licensing.com/
Putting my FreeBSD-hat aside and speaking as one of the project admins of LAME:
What you list here are the Fraunhofer/Technicolor patents. There are at least 2 more parties involved. To what I was told the two other known patent portfolios are currently in the hands of Nokia and Sisvel. The later one being a very active party when it comes down to their intellectual property.
I don't know anything about when patents from the other two portfolios expire, nor what those patents would be, nor if they are expired or not. My only knowledge is basically "there are more than those you quoted".
It seems that the FreeBSD port for LAME could now have the restriction removed, allowing the packages to be available for users by default.
My recommendation: not without legal advice (which IMO would be up for portmgr to seek for, together with the Foundation, if at all). In case we would go this way, I could ask my source of this information if he is willing to provide some more info as a seed for further investigation by someone else. Or if some Linux distro(s) are interested for a joined investigation (maybe the EFF is interested too)...
Bye, Alexander. -- http://www.Leidinger.net [email protected]: PGP 0x8F31830F9F2772BF http://www.FreeBSD.org [email protected] : PGP 0x8F31830F9F2772BF
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