mp3 patents - (was:Re: [patch] Replace internal mpglib with libmpg123 usage)

Quoting Roberto José de Amorim via Lame-dev  
<[email protected]> (from Sun, 10 Sep 2017 18:02:30 +0000  
(UTC)):

> Another thing I was thinking, maybe now would be a good time to  
> write a text at the index page about the patent expiration? I  
> already added a text about this at the Patent Information section of  
> the links page:"By April 23rd, 2017 all relevant software patents  
> applying to MP3 compression technology had expired. MP3 is now  
> considered to be a patent-free format, and licenses are not being  
> collected anymore. Anyone is free to implement the specification and  
> distribute the implementation."
> That leads us to another question: will Lame start distributing its  
> own binaries? Or better leave it as it is, with third party sites  
> doing this work?

In FreeBSD I have it still restricted for distribution with this comment:
19	# http://www.mp3licensing.com/ only talks about the FhG and  
Technicolor patent portfolio
20	# but there are also portfolios from Sisvel (from Philips) and
21	# Nokia (from AT&T -> Lucent -> Alcatel).
22	# Some "old" patents are now expired, but there are more recent MP3  
patents. Some
23	# of the more recent ones are multi-channel related, which is not  
implemented in LAME.
24	# There was no investigation (in the LAME project) about which  
patent exists, which
25	# one is implemented in LAME, and which one is not (yet) expired.  
As such it is not
26	# known if LAME could now be distributed as a binary package or not.
27	# Linux distributions seem to go the "let's see if get sued" way,  
FreeBSD doesn't
28	# follow this.

Bye,
Alexander.

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