This is the mail archive of the cygwin-apps mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: [ITP] libmad/libmad0/libmad-devel: A high-quality MPEG audiodecoder


Brian Dessent wrote:
You're correct. The mp3 format/algorithm is patented, and you are
supposed to obtain a license if you ship software that uses it. <http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/developer.html#5>. It doesn't matter
what the license of the source code is, because patents apply to
algorithms and methods not to specific implementations. This is why a
lot of noncommercial linux distros have to omit mp3-playing capability
from their package list and relegate it to "extras" or "third party
sites." So, no mp3 libs in Cygwin would seem to be the prognosis.

Further, it appears that Red Hat (Fedora) has chosen to avoid these libraries as well. libmad is available for Mandriva at the Penguin Liberation Front; it is available for Fedora over at Freshrpms -- both of which are hosted, er, elsewhere and are not discussed or supported on official channels.


===

Side note: I often use an old copy of upset to generate setup.ini's for my locally built packages which I store in a cygwin/release tree on my private server, and add that URI to my setup.exe's URI list. I once advocated ("RFD: A modest proposal #2: unsupported" http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-04/msg00306.html) having an 'unsupported' tree on the official mirrors similar to the existing 'release' tree but that was shot down for good reason. IIRC at some point in the discussion it was pointed out that the existing functionality in setup was sufficient to solve the problem I described, and much more flexible, and did not require official sanction from the cygwin mirror system.

--
Chuck


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]