Ben Reser wrote:
> A patent means you own the rights to use an invention/process. The ISO
> code is copyrighted but is also pateneded. Using the ISO code in
> anything that is distibuted commercially would require a license to do
> so. Fraunhaufer (or however you spell it) seems to have ignored
> requiring a license of the patent for playback. However, they have not
> ignored that for encoding.
But LAME does not use the ISO code. Now the code is 100% original and is
LGPL'ed. The decoding functions are from mpglib and are GPL'ed. Now,
Mandrake includes mpg123, because yes, I see what you're saying, that
they did ignore functions for decoding (mpg123), but not encoding
(lame). But I'll say it again, that LAME clains to no longer contain any
ISO code and is LGPL'ed. Now, as to whether this makes any bit of
difference as far as whether the patent still stands, I don't know,
either, unfortunately.
--
Sincerely,
David Walluck
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
