I was advised to repost this to here to get answers to my questions,
so here goes. The author is planning to place the package under a BSD
license.
m.
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After a brief hunt for an mp3 encoder for my alpha, I discovered
this piece of software. It is an optimized version of the IIS
reference mpeg layer 3 encoder, with the optimization work done
principally by Andreas Johansson. It's available from
ftp://wopr.campus.luth.se:/pub/mpeg_layer_3
There's a number of issues with this. Firstly, the Fraunhoffer
patent. The author is in Sweden, and has not been contacted by
Fraunhoffer; apparently Swedish laws do not allow patenting of the
algorithm. Can we distribute it?
Secondly, the package is named 'encoder', and produces a single
binary named 'encode'. Does this count as namespace pollution?
And last, there's no copyright notice in the package. I am in touch
with the author, and don't believe that there will be any particular
issue with correcting this; my question is do we require a copyright
notice to appear in the source distribution (necessitating a new
release), or is it adequate to include, eg, an email granting us
permission to redistribute and modify freely?
Thanks for your time.
m.
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