[ITP] libmad/libmad0/libmad-devel: A high-quality MPEG audio decoder

[Charles Wilson]

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