<alert comment="ianal ... or know much about open source licenses">

I'm trying to better understand the licensing status of lame_enc.dll
(sorry if this has been discussed and resolved in the past)

The reason I inquire ... I'm thinking of putting together a prototype
Windows installer for the Audacity-CleanSpeech audio editor open
source freeware that has registry entries already preset to start in
"CleanSpeech mode". My speculation is that typical CleanSpeech
end-users aren't necessarily as computer literate as typical Audacity
end-users. I further speculate that having to download, install, and
configure Audacity to use lame_enc.dll will be a significant
burden/complication for some or many of them.

My understanding is that Audacity cannot include this .dll as part of
its distribution because of some provision(s) of the LAME and/or
mp3encoder license. I looked in Audacity's 1.2.3 Help file and came
across: "Export MP3 files", which gives information about the
situation.

I made an attempt to find the licensing information at the LAME
website, but didn't come across anything that I could comprehend. From
earlier emails on this list, it appears that there is a risk of a
lawsuit related to protection of intellectual property that may or may
not be of concern ... something about lower risk of distributing the
source code but not the binaries???

My further understanding is that end-users are expected to separately
download and install lame_enc.dll. To me, that seems like a
significant complication, and I thought I would ask:

* Is my understanding flawed or obsolete?

* Has the LAME license changed such that it could be included with
Audacity?

* Is there a way to get a waiver such that lame_enc.dll can be
included with CleanSpeechSetup.exe and/or AudacitySetup.exe?

</alert>


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