Re: [gNewSense-users] Free mp3 enconder

[Eric Padman]

Fluendo (the company behind gstreamer) has paid a fee to license the
MP3 patents for use with gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3. It is released
under a MIT license but it is not GPL compatible because of the patent
licensing.

"Any distribution or Unix maker out there who want to include the
Fluendo MP3 plug-in with their distribution can do so by just signing
a contract with Fluendo to become an official redistributor. This
contract includes no monetary compensation to Fluendo for getting the
right to redistribute the Fluendo MP3 plug-in and no demands of
additional purchases from Fluendo. The main purpose of the contract is
to satisfy our upstream contractual requirements. By signing this
contract any distribution can support mp3 out of the box without any
additional license fee. Take a look at the example contract and
contact us at address@hidden for details."

"If you are living in a country where the mp3 patents don't apply you
can of course use the source code provided by Fluendo (or anyone else)
to get legal mp3 support onto your Unix/GNU/Linux desktop.

On the other hand, if you live in a country where the patents apply,
or if you are a distribution maker who sells your distribution in
countries where the patents apply, then you need the licensed binary
from Fluendo. This of course is no problem, but be aware that even if
our binary is made from MIT licensed source code the resulting binary
combined with our license is not free software, at least not
GPL-compatible. This means that if you ship GStreamer with our binary
mp3 plug-in, you need to be sure that you don't ship any GPL-licensed
plug-ins that could end up being used together with the mp3 plug-in,
as this would violate the GPL. And you don't want to violate the GPL.
You also need to make sure you don't ship any GPL-licensed players
which would use this plug-in.

Luckily most GStreamer plug-ins are LGPL and there are already
playback applications out there with licensing terms that allow them
to be used with non-free plug-ins. The Totem media player and the
Banshee music player are two examples."

Quotes from http://www.fluendo.com/resources/fluendo_mp3.php

Fluendo distributes this as MIT licensed source and a binary plugin
which confuses matters somewhat.

LAME is free software (GPL) but probably can't be used legally in
countries where these software patents apply.

On a related question, what is the gNewSense position of software
patents as regards software in the repositories?

2008/6/16 Luis Alberto <address@hidden>:
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 4:16 PM, Luis Alberto <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> You may want to try gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
>> Free Software, but
>
> this is mp3, non-free format.
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Bruno Miguel
>> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>> Em 15-06-2008 19:41:51 briareoh escreveu:
>>> > Hi
>>> >
>>> > > This situation makes me question if there is a free mp3
>>> > > library or something like that for ffmpeg. I found an
>>> > > enconder, but it is not capable of converting videos to
>>> > > audio.
>>> >
>>> > As far as I know, the LAME library is free software.
>>> > Although, you can
>>> > use Audacity with Lame to convert files.
>>> > Try it:
>>> > http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php
>>> >
>>> > Cheers
>>> >
>>>
>>> So, why it's not included in gNS 2.0?
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Luis Alberto Guzmán García
>
>
> --
> Luis Alberto Guzmán García
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