[gst-devel] lame and mp3 licence

[Julien Moutte]

Hi,

If you want to avoid problems, you can contact Fluendo as we have a
commercial MP3 encoder with patent licensing for it. (Being used and
sold in the Flumotion streaming server).

I already tried to get Lame relicensed for the same purpose and failed badly.

Best regards,

Julien Moutte,
FLUENDO S.A.



On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Sean McNamara <smcnam at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Vincent Meserette <vmeserette at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I plan to use the lame gstreamer plugin to allow mp3 encoding in a
>> commercial product that I develop.
>> Does anyone know if I must buy a mp3 licence which will allow me to do that
>> ?
>
> By using the `lame' module of GStreamer, you must directly comply with
> (at least) three licenses, and possibly also patent laws (which may
> require you to purchase a patent license covering the MP3 patents in
> any countries in which you sell your software; see below for the
> patent stuff):
>
> The GStreamer license:
> http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/licensing.html
>
> The LAME license: http://lame.sourceforge.net/license.txt
>
> As a side effect of LAME using mpglib, you'll also need to abide by
> the mpglib license if you use lame for mpeg decoding. The version of
> mpglib used internally by lame (unless this has been updated) was
> licensed under the GPL, not the LGPL. That said, it is unclear to me
> whether GStreamer even uses the decoding part of LAME at all. If you
> only use the `lameenc' element through GStreamer, I don't think that
> is using the relevant mpglib bits, although you might want to
> investigate that more closely.
>
> The link to the relevant patent info is here:
> http://lame.sourceforge.net/links.php#Patents
>
> Generally speaking, mp3 decoding on Free Software platforms (i.e.
> without an explicit MP3 license in your own name) has largely been
> solved if you use Fluendo's free plugin from
> http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/fluendo-mp3-decoder . Read that
> page for an explanation of why you do not need to buy a patent license
> to use that software. But mp3 encoding is significantly more risky,
> because the licensing organizations consider encoding (especially in
> commercial software) to be a separate, juicy target for licensing
> fees, and because no company has yet stepped up to pay the licensing
> fees to allow a redistributable mp3 encoder. The way the licensors
> work, they place a significantly higher monetary value on encoding,
> which will be reflected in any price quotes you get from them. If you
> plan your software to be extremely high impact (millions of licenses),
> the chance of the MP3 patent licensors approaching you increases.
>
> Of course, if you are not going to sell your software in countries
> that recognize the MP3 patents, you are scot free. You can also elect
> to take your chances and hope you stay under their radar, but IMHO
> that is a risky foundation for a business, and immoral in at least
> some sense; although software patents are bad, two wrongs don't make a
> right.
>
> Since you are putting out a commercial project that will bring in
> revenue, you can probably afford a lawyer, yes? While you have their
> services, make sure you are complying with the licenses of the Free
> Software you link against, such as GStreamer.
>
>
>> Sorry, I searched on the web but I'm a little bit confused with these
>> licensing problems.
>
> The mp3 in Free Software issue (or, more generally, implementing
> patented algorithms without licensing those patents) has been
> discussed to death all over the internet. There are literally
> thousands of articles on this from every point of view -- from the
> purist "just use Ogg/Vorbis", to the defeatist "just license from
> MPEG-LA", to the pragmatist "use Fluendo for decoding and pay for
> encoding licenses", to the illegalist "use gst-plugins-ugly and ignore
> the threats of legal action". And some people can ignore these issues
> entirely because they live in a place where all this software patent
> stuff is not part of their country's legal system. The issue is
> significantly more complicated when you are distributing an mp3
> encoder in binary form to a global audience.
>
> The only way to be *completely sure* about what the right course of
> action is for you -- depending on where you are, and where your
> customers will be -- is to get a lawyer. You can read infinite amounts
> of wise advice from other people, but unless they are providing you
> official legal advice, it is just noise, and you should take it with a
> grain of salt -- including the entirety of this message.
>
> -Sean
>
>>
>> Thanks in advance for your replies.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context: http://gstreamer-devel.966125.n4.nabble.com/lame-and-mp3-licence-tp2241643p2241643.html
>> Sent from the GStreamer-devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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