The Fluendo people have fully licensed the mp3 audio codec with redistribution rights in place, meaning that future versions of Fedora or Ubuntu will be able to support mp3 out of the box. "In order to improve the GNU/Linux and Unix multimedia experience Fluendo announced today the immediate availability of their MP3 plug-in for the GStreamer multimedia framework. The MP3 decoder is available free of charge both for individual end users and GNU/Linux and Unix distribution makers. In addition to making their licensed binary plug-in available to the public Fluendo also released the source code to this MP3 plug-in under the very permissive MIT license allowing all kind of developers and companies access to it."
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Member since:2005-07-14
Uhh... what does this mean for Ubuntu in terms of providing a Free operating system?
Its an open source codec. Plus is not like Ubuntu is the preacher's sheets with such things- it reads NTFS out of the box and has a restricted repo enabled by default.
This is great news!
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2005-07-06
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"Also, it's binary-only, which means that it's useless for non-x86 platforms."
What part of: "In addition to making their licensed binary plug-in available to the public Fluendo also released the source code to this MP3 plug-in under the very permissive MIT license allowing all kind of developers and companies access to it." didn't you understand?
Member since:2005-07-06
Actually, this is entirely a good thing - as I understand it, redistribution rights means that they will cover any expenses for the patents so that anyone can redistribute it.
It doesn't mean it isn't open source, it's MIT licensed.
What I don't quite understand is - how is all this possible? What resources does Fluendo have that Redhat, Canonical or Novell don't, that they can provide MP3 support for free for everyone?
Member since:2005-07-27
>What I don't quite understand is - how is all this possible? What resources does Fluendo have that Redhat, Canonical or Novell don't, that they can provide MP3 support for free for everyone?
I second that, if it was "this easy", why didn't the big players do it? Surely, they have the money...
Member since:2005-11-05
Fluendo is the company that writes gstreamer, what part of that do you not understand? When it comes to multimedia and Linux, Fluendo knows it. They just hired a genius programmer (Edward hervey, author of pitivi) and he's been hacking away on python bindings for gstreamer + some other very cool projects.
Fluendo is doing this because gstreamer is their responsibility. Any newbie will attest that no mp3 support really sucks so they are filling this hole for the community. Why are you flaming a company that wants to help everyone out by giving you licensed codecs for free?
Take off your tinfoil hats, the black helecoptors aren't after you anymore.
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Read the laws, the Fraunhoefer Institute still holds the patents on the mp3 codec and would require each distribution that wants to add out of the box mp3 support to license it. I'm sure many of the purists will cry foul *cough* Debian *cough*.
While very important, I somehow doubt this will mean distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE will include out of the box mp3 support as they are made of completely free software. Redhat doesn't even include ntfs support as ntfs is patented by MS. Hopefully they will just make it easier to install the plugins.
Example: You try to play an mp3 in rhythmbox and it says, "Mp3 support is not currently enabled, would you like to install it?" You click yes and (insert favorite package manager) it's downloaded and installed from somewhere online from Fluendo. That is the best case scenario that we need to work towards.
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The true "best case scenario" would be to use (and promote) free, open standards:
In many cases the user doesn't have a choice. E.g., I found a rare recording of my favorite singer - in mp3. I am not going to find it in ogg format for the next 10 years.
If I was creating a file - then, of course, I'd use ogg.
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Who said this was easy ?
a) we spent hours and hours discussing what our options are to make this possible
b) we spent even more hours coming up with a plan that gives every one involved the best deal (normal users, distributors, us), and still satisfy our upstream obligations
c) we paid a bunch of money to get the license
d) we spent a lot of days actually molding the reference code into a maintainable project with readable and reasonably speedy code
e) we spent a lot of days integrating IPP into the build
Do you really think a distribution like Red Hat or Novell has nothing better to do than do all this ? 
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Kudos to you guys for all this work.
And as for this -
Do you really think a distribution like Red Hat or Novell has nothing better to do than do all this ?
well, for their users they could hardly find anything better to do than this.
Byt he way, out of curiaosity: how much money does it cost? Clearly the sum is undisclosed, but could one give us some idea what is the order of magnitude? $100,000? Was it a one-time deal or annually paid sum?
Member since:2005-07-06
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Thanks for getting it done! We in userland appreciate it greatly! Does this mean I'll be able to rip, not just read? And will you work with Novell, RedHat, etc., to get it into the top distros? Hoping so....
IMO, the best solution for this situation is what you have done: satisfy Fraunhofer (sp?) legal requirements by contracting with them for royalties, but still being able to provide an open-source codec for the format. The RIAA isn't going to like this, since their DRM-ware on CDs won't prevent rips to MP3 on Linux boxes, but that only puts the enforcement of copyrights back to what it should be: legal action against violators, not restricted use by legal users. You have in effect swung the legal balance in that battle back in favor of "fair use" for legal users. No small feat, and not of small consequence.
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Well, I can just imagine the business model.
The licence company (who it is, i can't remember) realize that they can't beat OSS with their OGG with the current model of licence. Even so which is far more important, the WMA is also catching up, so they have to do someting without losing their face.
Also, to cooperate with Fluendo make more sence than to have an agreeemnet with Red Hat or Sun etc.
As a user, this is perfect. whit the next release of my distribution i can play mp3 out of the box.
But still, I will not be able to listen to my favorite radio station who use the WMA format without abandon gstreamer.
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I suspect it's just that it wasn't a worthwhile investment for them to do so.
Fluendo specializes in streaming multimedia, I believe, so to be able to support MP3 is a big win for them. IBM and Redhat are targeting the server market, where MP3 playing ability isn't exactly a priority (a "HA-HA! My server plays MP3s better than your server!" "who cares?" sort of situation)
Novell is targetting the business desktop, which is less multimedia oriented than just about anything, so it's not exactly an amazing investment for them.
As for Canonical? I don't know. Maybe their resources are already streched by providing Ubuntu for free? Maybe Mark Shuttleworth decided it would be better to leave MP3 playing unsupported and just push for more adoption of free standards as a philosophical stance?
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2005-08-02
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Member since:2005-11-11
"yeah, at least they are providing the source code for that trojan horse..."
LOL, it's about time OSS community started developing some open source viruses, trojans and spyware.
Regarding Fluendo - great news. This should help with linux adoption quite a bit. One of the major complaints from linux newbies is "it can't even play MP3s".
Member since:2005-06-29
Ok, this was -2. Can someone explain to me when we started ignoring the rules for moderating comments down again?
Remember, if you dissagree with a comment and you have to do something about it then you are supposed to reply and rectify the facts. You can't just moderate someone down because you dissagree, it goes against the rules and if everyone started doing that there wouldn't be any comments to see unless we all browsed at -5.
Member since:
2005-12-23
Their code is under the MIT license, so normally that would mean that anybody would be able to use it under the terms of the MIT license. However, the patent still applies doesn't it? I would like to know if it's allowed to distribute (binary) versions of their plugin without signing the agreement they offer to Linux distributions.
Somehow they present it that way, but that doesn't seem logical (since that would be a loophole in the MP3 patent licensing policy that would allow anyone to distribute MP3 support without paying for the patent).
Could somebody shed some light on this issue?
Member since:
2005-10-18
A quote from http://www.fluendo.com/resources/fluendo_mp3.php:
On the other hand, if you live in a country where the patents apply, or if you are a distribution maker who sells your distribution in countries where the patents apply, then you need the licensed binary from Fluendo. This of course is no problem, but be aware that even if our binary is made from MIT licensed source code the resulting binary combined with our license is not free software, at least not GPL-compatible. This means that if you ship GStreamer with our binary mp3 plug-in, you need to be sure that you don't ship any GPL-licensed plug-ins that could end up being used together with the mp3 plug-in, as this would violate the GPL. And you don't want to violate the GPL. You also need to make sure you don't ship any GPL-licensed players which would use this plug-in.
Luckily most GStreamer plug-ins are LGPL and there are already playback applications out there with licensing terms that allow them to be used with non-free plug-ins. The Totem media player and the Banshee music player are two examples.
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Quote from http://gplv3.fsf.org/process-definition
While the GPL is the most popular Free Software License, followed by the LGPL, a significant set of free software is licensed under other terms which are not compatible with version 2 of the GPL. Version 3 of the GPL will provide compatibility with more non-GPL free licenses.
but
Our cardinal principle is to make no change impeding any of the four basic freedoms for software users that the free software movement enshrined in GPL version 2: to run, study, copy, modify and redistribute software.
Edited 2005-12-24 02:19
Member since:2005-08-07
Member since:2005-10-27
First I cheered. Finally my distribution ((k)ubuntu) can ship with mp3 support out of the box. Then I read these two paragraphs and now I don't think this will happen.
Of all the well known multimedia players only banshee (not GPL) and totem (GPL with an exception, that allow non-free gstreamer plugins) can be shipped with it. Neither rhythmbox nor amarok can be shipped with it. So I don't think we'll see ubuntu with mp3 support.
I don't see any advantage with this new plugin. If I have to install mp3 support manually after installation I can also use the gstreamer-mad-plugin.
The situation for amarok is even worse than rhythmbox. According to http://www.advogato.org/person/Uraeus/diary.html?start=480
we might not be able to do opensource Qt based applications using GStreamer (or any other multimedia framework for that matter) that ships with non-free plugins
*sigh* This announcement just sounded to good to be true.
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2005-07-06
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Member since:2005-10-27
They didn't mention rhythmbox, because you cannot ship it with the mp3 plugin.
Banshee doesn't use GPL and totem has added an exception to its license, so you can ship it with non-free gstreamer plugins.
But maybe we'll see such an exception in RBs licence in the future.
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2005-10-20
I solute to these guys, because, not matter how like open source and free software (and Ogg Vorbis/Theora is starting to gain brainshare and support, it is delight to see that), we _need_ good AND _legal_ mp3 (and other commercial media format) support for common crowd level distros. And it is where these guys roll in.
So what it means to end user? It means that RedHat commercial offerings could be coupled with mp3 plugin, that Linspire, utt. could be distributed with mp3 support by default. That means that even Fedora could (if they will work out agreement with Fluendo) distribute it for FREE. It won't be Free Software, however, but at least people will have _official_ option to install or not to install it.
I love Ogg and FLAC and I will stick with these, but for those all other people who has huge collections of mp3, they can play them out of box, while don't care about looking for some half-legal repository with mp3 plugins.
Member since:2005-07-06
I love Ogg and FLAC and I will stick with these.
Have you checked out Musepack*?
* http://www.musepack.net/
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Member since:2005-07-09
Actually, it has little to do with zealotry. There are several reasons for choosing open source over closed source:
* transparency -- if you expose the source you can avoid Sony-CD like spywhere
* maintainability -- you can't fix what you can't change. That's one reason why Red Hat won't support binary packages and why Linus (who is anything bug a free software zealot) refuses to support binary modules (you can use them, but he doesn't care if the next kernel will break your modules)
* portability -- the x86 isn't the only platform out there and unless you have a version compiled for your platform, it may not work.
* legality -- even if you are pro-proprietary, you have to respect the license or EULA of the software you use. If your license says that you can't link with proprietary software, you can't link with proprietary software. Doing otherwise is a license violation.
Personally, I'm happy with the announcement. It'll at least take care of the transparency and maintainability concern, assuming that it is possible to verify that the source really does compile down to the binary so we can verify that Fluendo doesn't pull a Sony-like deception and assuming that Fluendo stays in business until the MP3 patent expires, But it is still not the perfect solution. The best solution is simply to get ogg and flac supported by hardware vendors and music players. There's been great progress on this, but it will take time. Supporting free alternatives doesn't make you a zealot. It just makes you practical and law-conscious.
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2005-08-15
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2005-07-06
Fraunhofer holds the mp3 buisness, but I thought there were other alternatives than using raunhofer patented technology?
LAME for example is a free version of mp3 encoding software, that competes with the Fraunhofer and Xing codecs. Doesn't this imply there's a possibility for free mp3-decoding software?
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No - LAME is not a Free encoder in the Free Software sense. It comes as source, but that doesn't confer any legal right to use the patent-covered techniques it implements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME
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No - LAME is not a Free encoder in the Free Software sense. It comes as source, but that doesn't confer any legal right to use the patent-covered techniques it implements.
This is a bit misleading. Of course you can compile and use the binary. Just making the binary (or produced mp3s) available to others without having a license is illegal. And e.g. for streaming purposes you need an extra license. Read it up yourself:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/
Using Ogg Flac/Vorbis is the better choice - not only for quality reasons.
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2005-11-20
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This doesn't solve anything.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2005-December/msg0...
Member since:2005-06-29
Did you read the rest of the thread, that one post doesn't go uncontested. I haven't followed it enough to see if RH can include GStreamer and it's mp3 support, but even if they don't I've always though RH was way too ANAL about this kind of thing.
Red Hat might not go for this, but I'm hoping that SUSE might. Right now SUSE's other backends used with amaroK have a response lag time of several seconds when I press a button and I'm hoping this will change things.
Member since:
2005-08-28
Let me get this straight- Fluendo, the makers of Gstreamer, have paid the $300,000US or whatever it costs, to get a license to make and redistribute an official, legal MP3 codec (or is it a decoder only?) for Linux.
Because they can't release the source code under the GPL, it can't be used by any GPL'd software, such as AmaroK and Rhythmbox.
Also, even with the MIT license that allows people to do what they want with the source, there's still the possibility that their modifications will not also be covered under Fluendo's license, thereby preventing the community from really doing anything.
Sigh... It seems it's not even this easy.
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The source is irrelevant here. There are plenty of open source implementations of MP3 decoders. The problem is that they violate the patents so that distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu won't include them.
What Fluendo got is the rights to distribute the binary codec. The license for the binary codec is not compatible with the GPL. Which means the binary codec can't be used with GPL players (or other GPL codecs).
The MIT-licensed source is compatible with the GPL. However, any binaries that you produce (say for another platform) won't be covered by the license and will violate the patent.
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Have you seen this:
http://show.fluendo.org
Sounds like big $$$ is to be expected, now who is wasting his money on their plugins that others code for free ? Is GNOME going to become commercial ?
Browser: Links (2.1pre19; Linux 2.6.12 i686; 80x50)
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You might as well try these adresses too:
http://i.am.a.moron.who.doesnt.understand.anything.to.domain.names....
http://i.love.fluendo.org/
in fact try anything dot fluendo dot org
and then ask Santa Claus for a brain
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From elsewhere on their site:
"In our work towards ensuring that Linux and Unix users have multimedia capabilities that match or exceed those found on other platforms, Fluendo is producing a full-featured DVD playback application.
We will sell this player both to individual users and offer it to operating system and distribution makers for bundling. Based on our current plans, the DVD player will be ready sometime during the second half of 2006."
Does this mean a legal DVD codec and player???
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