71–80 of 291 posts
So is the FSF's campaign "Play Ogg!" [0] slowly becoming obsolete? [0] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/playogg/en/
Roughly in the way the "Burn All GIFs" [1] campaign became obsolete: the patents expired, removing the original objection, but nonetheless alternative formats are now better anyway. [1] http://burnallgifs.org/archives/
Recognizing this adds legitimacy to software patents. Don't. There have been free and open source MP3 decoders for many years now.
Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.
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MP3 is the worst performer of the lot, but is suddenly more attractive because it's free and AAC is decidedly not. If you don't need compatibility (like for bgm/sfx) it's still a worse choice than Vorbis or Opus because it compresses worse. For sfx and looping music in particular, mp3 is also a mess because there's no standard way to play back samples with zero delay and zero extra samples at the end.
I vaguely recall that Vorbis requires a fair bit more processing to decompress, enough to be a potential issue 15 years ago, but on modern computers it's barely detectable and doesn't effect performance at all.
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I vaguely recall that Vorbis requires a fair bit more processing to decompress, enough to be a potential issue 15 years ago, but on modern computers it's barely detectable and doesn't effect performance at all.
The problem now is battery. MP3 almost always has hardware decode which is really power efficient. This isn't as bad nowadays since audio decode isn't that intensive relative to keeping your WiFi on.
So, now that the "but MP3 is patent-encumbered" consideration is finally dead-ish, what's the new balance on the debate between shipping {MP3, MP4-AAC, MKV-Vorbis, MKV-Opus} as music/SFX assets in software products? Also, with the two sub-considerations: • on mobile, where hardware decoding exists for only some codecs; • on the web, where the audio APIs only accept some of these formats/codecs.
[1] Just looking through the sound effects and music asset folders in my sprawling Steam library.
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I vaguely recall that Vorbis requires a fair bit more processing to decompress, enough to be a potential issue 15 years ago, but on modern computers it's barely detectable and doesn't effect performance at all.
The problem now is battery. MP3 almost always has hardware decode which is really power efficient. This isn't as bad nowadays since audio decode isn't that intensive relative to keeping your WiFi on.
The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?
I think you do not need one anymore. The patent were filled in 1997, that's now 20 years ago. See: https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/0/05/mp3pat... The last two patents seem to be related to an encode optimization and are not needed to write a decoder. Which means it is possible now to include an MP3 decoder in GNU/Linux distros, etc. without paying the $2,500 fee.
I don't think I know the technical details well enough to comment on 5,924,060, but I'll note that it has a priority date of 1986 and publication date of 1999... good riddance to submarine patents.
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The problem now is battery. MP3 almost always has hardware decode which is really power efficient. This isn't as bad nowadays since audio decode isn't that intensive relative to keeping your WiFi on.
Wifi might be 100-200 milliwatts, but a laptop's speakers are likely to be 500-3000 milliwatts. Headphones are likely to be about the same as the wifi, but can vary wildly.
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Software patents are bullshit. A patent on an invention that many people would easily develop independently of one another should not, it is argued, be granted since this impedes development. [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Obviousness
There's nothing unique about software that makes it more likely to be developed independently by many inventors, the same happens often with hardware patents. And the same argument applies - the patent system as a whole impedes progress as much (or more?) than it advances it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you do not need one anymore. The patent were filled in 1997, that's now 20 years ago. See: https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/0/05/mp3pat... The last two patents seem to be related to an encode optimization and are not needed to write a decoder. Which means it is possible now to include an MP3 decoder in GNU/Linux distros, etc. without paying the $2,500 fee.
I think 5,703,999 is about shifting between using joint and separated stereo for frames depending on the amount of difference between the channels to avoid cross-channel interference, this sounds like it might still be important for lower bitrate mp3s. I don't think I know the technical details well enough to comment on 5,924,060, but I'll note that it has a priority date of 1986 and publication date of 1999... good…