[Vorbis] open source vs closed source compression

[Ulrich Windl]

On 6 Mar 2007 at 17:02, Richard Nagle wrote:

> is this the sign of the the times, that closed source compression formats,
> are going to be dead... since Microsoft is being sued for 1.5 Billion for
> using .mp3 in
> there Vista OS.

Ignoring whether the claim is valid or not, an open-source compression does in no 
way guarantee that software patents are not involved. It's the software patents, 
not the "binary only". However many companies think if they publish binary-only, 
noone can see where their code came from, not to talk about intellectual rights, 
etc.

The other thing is that most users of MP3 don't care about owning a license for 
using it, and some people even think that when using LAME (a binary using LAME) 
does not require them to have an MP3 license. I also think that most vendors of 
MP3 players in the far east do not care much about paying license fees for MP3.

> 
> Long Live open source.

Log live quality software!

Regards,
Ulrich