Fluendo GStreamer MP3 Plug-in
The MP3 audio format is hard to avoid as it is the format supported by
almost all portable music players and many people have already converted
their audio CD collections to the mp3 format. Today the Free Software community
along with many others are trying to migrate the world over to using the
open and royalty-free Ogg Vorbis codec. Yet a transition solution is needed
and this is where the Fluendo GStreamer MP3 plug-in comes in.
The Fluendo MP3 plug-in project is a combination of multiple things.
- It is MIT licensed source code package implementating the mp3 codec.
- It is a fully licensed binary GStreamer plug-in available for download.
- It is a redistribution contract allowing distributions to distribute
the binary Fluendo GStreamer MP3 plug-in free of charge.
The MIT licensed source code
Fluendo has developed an mp3 decoder which is fully usable and works today.
We hope that by licensing its source code under the very permissive MIT
license we will get other people in the community to help out improving it,
especially optimizing it for various platforms. The Fluendo mp3 plug-in's
primary means of optimisation will be using the
liboil optimisation library
for optimisations, but others are and can be supported. There
is support for Intel Programming Primitives optimisation included.
The fully licensed binary GStreamer plug-in
Fluendo has paid the license of Fraunhofer and Thomson to be able to
distribute a binary mp3 decoder. This means that
people who want mp3 support for the desktop music players can get a fully
licensed plug-in directly from this site for doing so.
The redistribution contract
Any distribution or Unix maker out there who want to include the Fluendo
MP3 plug-in with their distribution can do so by just signing a contract
with Fluendo to become an official redistributor. This contract includes
no monetary compensation to Fluendo for getting the right to redistribute
the Fluendo MP3 plug-in and no demands of additional purchases from Fluendo.
The main purpose of the contract is to satisfy our upstream contractual
requirements. By signing this contract any distribution can support mp3
out of the box without any additional license fee.
Take a look at the example
contract and contact us at
info@fluendo.com for details.
Where do I get it?
If you are a developer you can get the source code out of our Subversion
repository. You find details on that on the
source code page
If you are an end user who just wants the GStreamer plug-in binary you can
get it from the Fluendo webshop
where it's listed as a free item. If you only put the mp3 plug-in in your
shopping basket you will not be asked for any credit card information and
be allowed to download the mp3 plug-in binary.
Issues to be aware of
If you are living in a country where the mp3 patents don't apply you can
of course use the source code provided by Fluendo (or anyone else) to get
legal mp3 support onto your Unix/GNU/Linux desktop.
On the other hand, if you live in a country where the patents apply, or if you
are a distribution maker who sells your distribution in countries where
the patents apply, then you need the licensed binary from Fluendo. This
of course is no problem, but be aware that even if our binary is made from
MIT licensed source code the resulting binary combined with our license is
not free software, at least not GPL-compatible. This means that if
you ship GStreamer with our binary mp3 plug-in, you need to be sure that
you don't ship any GPL-licensed plug-ins that could end up being used
together with the mp3 plug-in, as this would violate the GPL.
And you don't want to violate the GPL. You also need to make
sure you don't ship any GPL-licensed players which would use this plug-in.
Luckily most GStreamer plug-ins are LGPL and there are already
playback applications out there with licensing terms that
allow them to be used with non-free plug-ins. The Totem media player and
the Banshee music player are two examples.
