Reading the new mp3 licensing website, I thinked about a potential
solution.
"Whereas no royalties are expected for demo versions of mp3 encoders
which are limited to either 20 encodes or 30 days under this license,
sales of full mp3 encoders have a per-unit royalty as mentioned below."
I think that according to this, we could consider the beta releases as
beeing demo releases. Then we could state them as beeing only usable
only 30 days. (given the responsability to not use it further to the
final user?) It should not be a problem, as most of the time, there are
beta releases more frequently than a 30 days basis.
"The license agreement includes free distribution of limited demo mp3
encoders, distributed for the sole purpose of generating sales of
upgrades to full mp3 encoders."
It means that our demos must be serving the purpose of selling full
(stable?) releases. So we must sell some licences. As the 15000$ minimum
annual fee is unaffordable to us, I think that we could ask a yet
licensing company to sell Lame licenses, for the price asked by FhG of
2.5$ per encoder, or perhaps up to 3$ in order to cover admninistrative
costs.
It would be benefic for both Lame and the licensing company. For Lame,
it could bring Lame in total legality in every contries, and it would be
a good publicity for the company.
I think that perhaps Proteron could be this company, as they've got a
licence agreement, and are using some parts of Lame in their products.
The goal of this mail is not to discuss about patents validity, but to
propose a solution.
I'd like to hear what both people on this list and Proteron think about
this.
Regards,
--
Gabriel Bouvigne - France
www.mp3-tech.org
--
MP3 ENCODER mailing list ( http://geek.rcc.se/mp3encoder/ )
