Relicensing the AMR codec for inclusion in Ubuntu

[Loïc Minier]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008, Robbie Williamson wrote:
> Thanks for the interest in improving the codec support for Totem.
> Unfortunately, from looking at the 3GPP questionnaire and their website,
> 3GPP does not have the rights to licensing the code itself, simply the
> rights to providing access and redistribution right for the specs:
>   "According to the Article 3.2.2 of the Third Generation Partnership
>    Project Agreement, the 3GPP Organizational Partners jointly own
>    copyright on the Technical Specifications and the Technical Reports
>    approved by 3GPP."

 The code is in the specs, isn't it?

> Voiceage apparently has the IP rights to the AMR codec
> (http://www.voiceage.com/amr_licterms.php) and requires payment on a per
> use basis, which is obviously not possible for us. As stated in the bug,
> our current best hope is to wait until support in ffmpeg is complete.

 Yup, we wont be able to offer the use of the codec by default, but I
 think it'd be nice if we'd integrate an AMR decoding implementation (in
 multiverse) telling people that they need an AMR license.  It would
 allow people to use this code easily, and not write their own AMR
 decoder or a third party one when they buy the license for use of the
 codec.

-- 
Loïc Minier