-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Wednesday 2007-01-31 at 01:02 -0900, John Andersen wrote:
On Wednesday 31 January 2007, Carlos E. R. wrote:
Nowhere did I claim, nor even hint, that «that speex and vorbis are not violating someone's patent». That's your saying.
That's exactly my point. I've read patent claims against those two formats on the web in the past, as well as the patent claims for the encoding algorithms used to encode flac.
Well, again acording to the wikipedia, that's just FUD. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Licensing> | ... The Xiph.Org Foundation states that Vorbis, like all its | developments, is completely free from the licensing or patent issues | raised by other proprietary formats such as MP3. Although Xiph.Org | states it has conducted a patent search that supports its claims, | outside parties (notably engineers working on rival formats) have | expressed doubt that Vorbis is free of patented technology.[4] | | Xiph.Org maintains that it was privately issued a legal opinion subject | to attorney/client privilege. It has not released an official statement | on the patent status of Vorbis, pointing out that such a statement is | technically impossible due to the number and scope of patents in | existence and the questionable validity of many of them. Such issues | cannot be resolved outside of a court of law. Some Vorbis proponents | have derided the uncertainty concerning the patent status as "FUD": | misinformation spread by large companies with a vested interest. | | Ogg Vorbis is supported by several large digital audio player | manufacturers such as Samsung, Rio, Neuros Technology, Cowon, and | iRiver. Many feel that the growing support for the Vorbis codec within | the industry supports their interpretation of its patent status, as | multinational corporations are unlikely to distribute software with | questionable legal status. The same could be said about its growing | popularity in other commercial enterprises like mainstream computer | games.
So it seems to me its unsafe to assume, merely because the current rush to ogg is in vouge, that any real escape from this patent nonsense is possible.
To say that is probably similar to M$ claims of Linux violating their pattents. Just FUD, unless they prove it in court. Anyway... software pattents are nonsensical :-( - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFFwHLmtTMYHG2NR9URAkZEAJkBAAPLpMSXAIgYcziPa3X+qSClMwCfa53f lLe96fwLbbNCcpUc3sXOwBQ= =TjCw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----