


What matters is that our actions, should we move, clearly state that developers and users will not tolerate restrictive patents, will not tolerate I am not saying that in the future Ogg Vorbis will be free from some of the same problems we have with MP3. It is what I think users should demand, but if they won't, it is what I will provide. I will back away from it if there is a free alternative. LAME is completely unencumbered at this time, By offering something else, I can influence users, in however small measure, toĬhange their minds and use free software. People use mp3 because that is what is being offered.
MP3 ENCODER REVIEWS CODE
Proving patent violation in an embedded DSP system is another matter altogether, though ) Do the courts have the right to subpoena your source code to check? Any permutation the patent doesn't explicitly recognize is not covered by the patent.

"this is x^2/2 in my implementation, but the patent covers any polynomial function in this position") and so forth. The patent itself specifies how much each component can vary (e.g.
MP3 ENCODER REVIEWS SOFTWARE
Indeed, if you look at the patents for this sort of thing, they generally include the block diagram for the filter - since you can't patent software, only "hardware" (and this protects software "emulation" of said "hardware", which is the loophole which allows software to be patented).Ī friend of mine is in fact a patent researcher in the field of digital audio, and himself holds a patent on a type of nonlinear feedback network. I guess this relates to the MP3 codec - you don't have to use Fraunhofer's algorithm, but if you do the sound quality is better.Īnyway, AFAIK (and IANAL) as long as the implementation is substantially different, the patent is not violated. Thus you choose Direct-II or some other algebraic manipulation of the algorithm based on these criteria. Plus, FM synthesis is used by all manner of people who aren't Yamaha (maybe licensed, maybe not).Īs you know, the thing with filters is that the implementation doesn't matter from a pure math viewpoint, but once rounding errors occur you need to choose an implementation that minimizes them. Then you notice that Waveguide synthesis is just a generalized Karplus-Strong, and that's patented by someone else. For instance, Yamaha have patents on FM synthesis and the Karplus-Strong string algorithm.
