On Wed, Aug 16, 2000 at 01:58:04PM +0200, Jan Dittberner wrote:
> > we cannot distribute it (because of fraunhoser or whatever is
> > their name).
>
> Fraunhofers patent is only valid for ISO based encoders. The
> lame source is now independent of the ISO sources and therefore
> not subject of the patent (IIRC).
You don't RC: lame is developed independently, so it's free of copyright
claims from fraunhofer. But it still uses patented algorithmns, and its
not clear if it's even possible do write a patent-free mp3 encoder.
I'd propose to modify lame so it only encodes .ogg files (which are, according
to http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/, patent free). It may write a message
'get lame with mp3 encoding from....' if one tries to encode mp3.
Jan
