[EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb:
> Hello,
Hi!
> I am a little confused and I hope you can help me.
>
> I implement "mpglib.lib", "libmp3lame.lib" and "lame.h" into an application
> which job is to decode mp3 files. Now I get the information if I release this
> application I have to pay royalties to Thomson. (I thought you only have to
> pay
> to Thomson if you're working with the Fraunhofer Codec).
>
> So here is my question:
> Do I have to pay royalty to Thomson if I use Lame code inside of an
> application
> which will be available for free/for money?
In fact the matter is a little easier and more complex at the same time ;)
The official licensing is conerned about the whole MPEG intellectual
property, not only about MP3. Since MP3 is part of the MPEG-2 spec you
will fall into the MPEG licensing class. You can find info about the
licensing consortium at
http://www.mpegla.com/
Concerning Fraunhofer, Thomson and others it is not the case that
Fraunhofer has invented MP3 and thus has rights on it. Same goes for
Thomson, Phillips and all the others.
The development was done by a consortium of several companies. Each
company developed parts of the whole system. Fraunhofer developed most
parts of the psycho acoustic model and the theory around it. But to
claim that they "invented" MP3 is IMHO too high. They contributed to it,
yes, but they did not invent the whole thing.
This was the easy part ;)
Concerning the decoding there was some dispute between Fraunhofer, the
MPEG consortium and especially the OpenSource community. All parties,
except for Fraunhofer, saw that a rigid patent and licensing scheme
would prevent wide acceptance of their new proposed standard. After some
struggeling the MPEG consortium accepted a "gentleman agreement" which
sais that decoders will be free to use as long as no profit is made from it.
So this means that MP3 decoders like mpg123, madplay and others can be
used freely as long as they are not sold themselves or used to make any
profit, like in a radio station decoding their program to broadcast.
But "making profit" is not 100% clear either- What about for example
commercial Linux distribution vendors that include mpg123 or such in
their distribution? Is this a commercial use of the free software?
Strictly speaking yes, because this additional package adds a value to
their distribution thus they make profit from it. But on the other hand
what is the value of this single package? Very dabatable. And this is
IMHO the reason why only quite few commercial distros contained MP3
decoding programs. Today even Fraunhofer does not care that much about
MP3 anymore so more and more distros dare to use it.
A different issue is the encoder - back to Lame now ;)
The encoder is still fully protected and has to be licensed - as long as
you intend to really use it... The trick for Lame here is that we are
dealing with a patent. That means that the technology description is
free to everyone as well as the reference implementation. So you are
allowed to have a look at the source, you can modify it and you can even
share those modifications with others - that's what Lame does. But you
must not *use* the code, i.e. you must not compile it or even run it.
For this you need an encoder license. Ridiculous, isn't it?
And this is independant from using anything from Tomson, Phillips or
Fraunhofer, independent from basing on the reference implementation or
not. The patent and licensing claims extend on the ideas and principals
of the inner working, not any concrete lines of code. And the sole owner
of this is the MPEG consortium. Any claims of the consortium members
have been transferred to the consortium.
As a sidenote I would like to add that the early "license war" that
Fraunhofer did, where they made claims "as the inventor of MP3" to all
and everyone, even OpenSource projects, have been disapproved by the
MPEG consortium. One of the results is this "gentleman agreemen"
mentioned above for the decoder code, which I would see as little excuse
from the consortium to the OpenSource community for the harsh actions
from Fraunhofer.
So, I hope the above clears your question to a certain extend ;)
Any corrections are of course welcome! The above is just my collection
of memory I have from the last ... hmmm ... six years?
> Thanx,
> Micha.
Cheers
nils faerber
--
kernel concepts Tel: +49-271-771091-12
Dreisbachstr. 24 Fax: +49-271-771091-19
D-57250 Netphen Mob: +49-176-21024535
--
_______________________________________________
mp3encoder mailing list
[email protected]
http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/mp3encoder
