[gst-devel] Can a MPEG-1 with Audio Layers 1&2 plugin be in plugins-good (patentwise)?

[jjcogliati-gstreamer at yahoo.com]

Thank you for the answers.  I have some follow up questions inline below:

--- On Sat, 8/23/08, David Schleef <ds at schleef.org> wrote:

> From: David Schleef <ds at schleef.org>
> Subject: Re: [gst-devel] Can a MPEG-1 with Audio Layers 1&2 plugin be in plugins-good (patentwise)?
> To: jjcogliati-gstreamer at yahoo.com, "Discussion of the development of GStreamer" <gstreamer-devel at lists.sourceforge.net>
> Date: Saturday, August 23, 2008, 2:15 PM
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 08:51:20PM -0700,
> jjcogliati-gstreamer at yahoo.com wrote:
> > So my questions for this list are:
> > 1. Could a MPEG-1 video decoder that was acceptably
> licensed and of
> > sufficient quality be added to the gstreamer good
> plugins?
> 
> Not now, because the relevant patents aren't expired. 
> The point of
> -good isn't to pack as much stuff into it as possible
> -- it's for
> stuff that distributors don't have to think twice
> about.  MPEG-1
> video is not at that point yet.  If the explanation why
> something
> can go into -good takes more than about one sentence,
> it's probably
> not OK.

Okay.  What are some of the relevant patents that are unexpired?  In my internet search, I have not found a single place or person that listed a single unexpired MPEG-1 Video patent.  Of course, I fully realize that there may be patents out there even if nobody on this list can name any.  
 
> > 2. Could a MPEG-1 audio layer 2 decoder that was
> acceptably licensed
> > and of sufficient quality be added to the gstreamer
> good plugins?
> 
> MPEG-1 audio layer 2 has never been patent encumbered,
> encoding or
> decoding.  There just isn't a good library that has
> been wrapped.

Okay, so let me check.  If libTwoLAME, an LGPL library that encodes MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2 was wrapped, and assuming that it was of sufficient quality then it could be included in gstreamer plugins-good?  
http://www.twolame.org/
http://packages.debian.org/etch/twolame

Also, lets say that mpegaudioparse, which is currently in plugins-ugly, had *all* the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 parsing removed, and a new plugin called something like mpegaudiolayer_1_and_2parse was created.  Could this hypothetical mpegaudiolayer_1_and_2parse be added to plugins-good?

> > 3. If the answer to either of the above is no, what
> would prevent that
> > from occurring?  
> 
> Er, uh, code just doesn't just magically appear out of
> thin air.  :)

I agree, but I wanted to know if it was worth creating the code.  :)
 
> 
> dave...

Josh Cogliati