[64studio-devel] fluendo licence?

[Quentin Harley]

Arnaud Baysse wrote:
> Thanks Quentin for your answer. But there still something I don't 
> understand: what is exactly the fluendo licence? Why 64s cannot use 
> the libmad from Debian, which is I thought very strict on the free 
> software rules and licence-less?

Unfortunately this is not true. Even though libmad is free, and open 
source, it is built on the mpeg standards of the Fraunhofer Society.  
The agreement is that end users don't have to pay to use the codec, but 
software developers or distribution packagers needs to license the 
codecs per unit sold / distributed.  This is not a problem if you 
install the libmad yourself (as I did BTW.)  Daniel and Free has a 
registered company, and they are the targets of potential claims from 
the proprietary codec industry.  This is why they did get a mpeg license 
for the gstreamer enabled "Fluendo" codecs.  They were very flexible in 
the license terms, and this was essential for a custom OS like 64studio

This is the short answer...

How debian itself gets away with it is another question...
Perhaps Free knows the answer to this, being a debian packager

Cheers,
Quentin