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Bug 782279 - Fraunhofer IIS MP3 patent expired, so can we ask them to open-source it?
Fraunhofer IIS MP3 patent expired, so can we ask them to open-source it?
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG
Product: GStreamer
Classification: Platform
Component: dont know
unspecified
Other All
: Normal normal
: NONE
Assigned To: GStreamer Maintainers
GStreamer Maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2017-05-06 22:03 UTC by valgrind
Modified: 2017-05-06 22:29 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description valgrind 2017-05-06 22:03:51 UTC 
It seems from what I've read that GStreamer is using a closed source Fraunhofer plugin to do its MP3 magic. So first of all correct me if I'm wrong.

But if I'm right, then it might be a good time to politely ask them to open source it. At minimum, it would be nice to see it "verbatim" licensed, so that everyone could see the source and give it the security review that it probably never received.

This seems like a petty concern, until you consider how many apps are built on GStreamer.

I could do this myself, but I don't have the user base behind me that you people do, and besides, you're the MP3 experts.

https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/prod/audiocodec/audiocodecs/mp3.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/duplicates/68ndg1/mp3s_patents_expire_hopefully_bringing_mp3/

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/fraunhofer-mp3-patent-expired-4175605159
Comment 1 Tim-Philipp Müller 2017-05-06 22:29:51 UTC 
GStreamer uses multiple different libraries to provide mp3 decoding and encoding functionality. All of them are open source software already (libmpg123, lame, ffmpeg).