[vorbis] Winamp5

[Tom Felker]

On Wednesday 17 December 2003 11:03 am, noprivacy at earthlink.net wrote:

> No, I don't have specific links.

For those interested, I'm guessing you're talking about this:

<http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1154927#post1154927>

Which links to these:

<http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1155766#post1155766>
<http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1161037#post1161037>
<http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1165047#post1165047>

> I didn't bother keeping them.  I came
> across that, oh, about the time winamp5_rc8 was released and I was browsing
> the forum.  In fact, I was looking around there because I had heard that
> vorbis encoding was going to be a *paid* feature rather than a free
> feature. They said they were giving AAC for free but making mp3 and Vorbis
> a paid feature.  Go figure!

<http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1145687#post1145687>

This link speculates that their AAC license excludes other codecs in some way.  
I don't think this is real reason, but it could be a complication - many 
proprietary codecs perpetuate themselves with funny licenses like that.

Apparently the main issue is indemnification - AOL's license from Dolby for 
AAC probably guarantees AOL won't be liable for any patent infringement, 
while the BSD license doesn't.  So being a big company with a legal 
department, AOL needs to cover its, um, self.  However...

<http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1161037#post1161037>

| The EXACT same thing was true for in_vorbis. It was out there for a LONG
| time before AOL gave the okay to include it in the Winamp Installer as an
| official plug.

And I don't think it's likely the encoder is encumbered and the decoder isn't.  
Possible, yes.  But it seems to me (IANAL) that any patent specifically about 
audio codecs would describe the entire process, not just one half.  So my 
guess is that eventually AOL's lawyers will say OK, and others will see this 
as a vote of confidence.


-- 
Tom Felker, <tcfelker at mtco.com>
<http://vlevel.sourceforge.net> - Stop fiddling with the volume knob.

Life is like an analogy.

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