audio players....

[gboyce at badbelly.com (gboyce)]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Don Levey wrote:

> discuss-bounces at blu.org wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 07:17:18AM -0500, Stephen Adler wrote:
>>> Guys,
>>>
>>> I know this is a linux mailing list, but...., most linux users are
>>> savy technophites... so I was wondering what people would suggest as
>>> a good audio player. I'm a fan of audio books and I ran across one
>>> web site which does not support iPods.
>>
>> Someone doesn't provide their data in an mp3 format? Doesn't sound
>> like the kind of place I'd like to support, personally.
>>
>
> Aren't there patents/other non-free encumbrances with the mp3 format?  If
> so, then perhaps the website owner doesn't want to have to pay that sort of
> tax, or is making a stand for OGG/FLAC, or whatever.

I believe the mp3 requirement is that if you sell an mp3 encoder or 
decoder, you must pay royalies.  There are no royalties for using one, so 
web site operators wouldn't need to pay.

There's also a gray area when it comes to free players and encoders in 
that Fraunhofer does not give an explicet license to distribute them, but 
they have in the past said they will not enforce anything on Free software 
that is not for sale.  People selling Free software is another matter, 
which is why Redhat stopped bundling mp3 software.