Is MP3 really free?

General JUCE discussion
1

Hi!
On some blogs and posts, I read that the MP3 format now is patent-free (for example, https://marco.org/2017/05/15/mp3-isnt-dead). I went to the official website (http://www.audioblog.iis.fraunhofer.com/mp3-software-patents-licenses/) and read that the Fraunhofer and Technicolor licensing patents expired after 23 april 2017. However, the site says that it affects only the core patents, but no implementation-specific patents.

So, I have a questions.

  1. Can 3rd-party developers implement own encoders/decoders in his products?
  2. Will the MP3 file encoder (MP3AudioFormat::createWriterFor) be implemented in JUCE in the future (without using LAME or others tools)?

Thanks!

3 Likes
2

Bootnotes MP3 ‘died’ and nobody noticed: Key patents expire on golden oldie tech

Maybe get a suit to confirm, but it looks like it

3

If this is the case, would be very handy to have mp3 encoding as part of JUCE.