The issue with PlusV and their use of the FFTW library spawned off a very interesting discussion on the Vorbis lists, involving among others Richard Stallman.

It discusses the legality of LAME, the combination of the GPL and patented software, enforcability of the GPL on LAME, and lots of other interesting issues:

You can access it via the Vorbis archives, and it's still going on. Consider it recommended reading if the MP3 patent/free software issues interest you.

http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/index.html (look for the '[vorbis] PlusV' thread)

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GCP

Hrmm... fairly interesting stuff, I just read through most of it. I'm not quite sure though what the full ramifications of all this are though and what (if anything) it will change in regards to something like LAME.

I think is the same situation of DivX.
DivX is an hack of MPEG4 (patented by M$ ?) then they released the code to the OpenSource community.
OpenDivX removed sue of the source (original was MoMoTu).
DivX steal their code and closed it.
Look here: http://forums.projectmayo.com/viewtopic.ph...ic=2431&forum=3

So who win ?

Think about this:

LAME vs. Thomson = 0 - 1

then:

OpenDivX vs. DivX = 0 - 1

so:

DivX vs. Micro$oft = ??




Listen to me guyz: switch to Vorbis (both audio & video) !!!

I'd love to switch to Ogg Tarkin, but I think it'll be at least 2 years before release.