cvs commit: ports/audio/lame Makefile

[Alexander Leidinger]

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 05:41:22 -0500 (EST)
Trevor Johnson <trevor at jpj.net> wrote:

A little side note: I'm listed as one of the maintainers of lame at the
SF project page.

> > >   Log:
> > >   Trevor thinks we may be seen as a manufacturer of lame if we distribute
> > >   packages, so mark the port as NO_PACKAGE for patent licensing
> > >   reasons.
> > >
> > >   The distfile is safe to distribute.
> 
> My recommendation was that "it would be best to mark it RESTRICTED".

AFAIK: Restricted implies "do not distribute the source". But
distributing the source is ok. Only distributing binary packages is
questionable. That's the reason we don't offer binaries at SF.

I talked with another developer of lame, he knows more about the legal
restrictions. He told me that he and another guy are distributing
binaries of lame on their own. So far Thomson is either not aware of
this (but both people distribute lame since a long time), or Thomson
doesn't care about them (either because lame is distributed for free, or
because some people at Thomson have enough knowledge to know they aren't
able to get (enough) money out of something which is distributed for
free), or Thomson doesn't thinks they are manufacturers (even if one of
the developers of lame distributes binaries on his own).

I hadn't marked lame as some kind of restricted so far, since Thomson
wants to see money only from developers or from manufacturers (see
http://www.mp3licensing.com/)). I don't see us as manufacturers, but
Trevor told me, we could be interpreted as manufacturers.

Since english isn't my native language, and I may not be aware of every
aspect of the word "manufacturer", I suggest to discuss this and tell me
about the final outcome (or just revert my last commit instead of
telling me the result).

> > This has wide implications for the ports tree (e.g. it prevents GNOME
> > and KDE from being installed via packages).
> 
> When I do
> 
> 	grep lame /usr/ports/INDEX|cut -f1 -d\|
> 
> I see 36 packages.  I don't see how GNOME is involved, and KDE only seems
> to be via kdemultimedia.  A simple expedient would be to remove
> kdemultimedia from the KDE metaport.

AFAIK GNOME uses lame only if compiled WITH_LAME.

> > Clearly this interpretation of the legality of redistributing lame is
> > not standard.
> 
> Well, let's see.
> 
> The authors of the program warn us that
> 
>    Using the LAME encoding engine (or other mp3 encoding technology) in
>    your software may require a patent license in some countries.

Thomson doesn't offer a license to users, they want to see a big
transaction from the developers/manufacturers of an mp3 encoder instead.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
           I will be available to get hired in April 2004.

http://www.Leidinger.net                       Alexander @ Leidinger.net
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