[mad-user] libmad newbie questions

[john cooper]

Alan Wolfe wrote:
> Heya!

First off, IANAL but more/less a casual observer.  I'd
encourage you to secure professional legal advice to
definitively answer your questions.

> I was wondering; since mp3 is a closed format that you need to pay 
> royalties for, how does libmad get around this?

It doesn't.  Technically you are on the hook to reconcile
your license liability with the holder of such in the
geography your product will be marketed:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues

That said enforcement has been selective and you conceivably
could choose your own comfortability level relative to your
situation.

> Also I was looking at the libmad page and noticed it said this under 
> licensing:

That is a separate license issue of Underbit's MAD decoder
software.  In a nutshell if you GPL your MAD enabled
application (possibly exposing your own IP) you may
distribute the aggregate under the GPL.  Otherwise you'll
need to contact the Underbit folks to negotiate an
alternate license agreement.

> I am looking for a way to convert mp3 to wav in a product that is going 
> to be released commercially and libmad really seems like the perfect 
> fit, I just want to make sure I know what's up with licensing before 
> commiting to this path.

If you are not bound to mp3 as a compression format, others
such as Ogg/Vorbis (well Tremor) may interest being a
license-free public domain format and offering compression/
quality benefits beyond that available from mp3.

     http://vorbis.com/faq/#flic

-john

-- 
john.cooper at third-harmonic.com