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heise online: Tumultuous Response to Alleged Change in MP3 Licensing Conditions
by Thomas Rösch 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

>From a huge german computer magazin, you can found it under: http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/data/jk-28.08.02-008/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tumultuous Response to Alleged Change in MP3 Licensing Conditions Ever since the early morning heise online has been receiving a swelling stream of disapproving comment on alleged changes to MP3 licenses: According to a posting at Slashdot[1] Thomson Multimedia, the exclusive licensor of MP3, is said to have erased a passage from its licensing conditions according to which no licensing fees were due for non-commercial free MP3 decoders. In doing so the company was said to be referring to the official table of fees[2], according to which a fee of 75 US cents per MP3 decoder or a one-off payment of 60,000 US dollars (for patent and software; 50,000 US dollars for the patent only) was due. As a matter of fact this rule has been in force for about eighteen months now[3]. At that time not only was the web design of MP3licensing.com modified, in the course of the creation of the then new MP3Pro the licensing conditions were also adjusted. Another decisive passage was also scrapped at that time: "No license fee is expected for desktop software mp3 decoders/players that are distributed free-of-charge via the Internet for personal use of end-users". By inquiring with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS[4]) and MP3Pro developer Coding Technologies[5] heise online was able to verify the existence of this link -- the tumult has hence been pretty late in coming. Given that Thomson Multimedia has since then not taken any legal steps against developers or distributors of non-commercial MP3 decoders, it does not appear that the future of free MP3 decoders is in jeopardy. As it is, for Thomson to take drastic legal measures in this matter would not make much sense: There is not much money to be had from freeware and open source developers who have created their own MP3 decoders. This is probably the reason why the licensor has refrained to date from taking the appropriate steps. The situation appears to be different with regard to encoders for the creation of MP3 files, however: As a rule in these cases the Fraunhofer Institute as well as Thomson insist that the licensing conditions be met; an open source packet called lame does, however, exist (whether, in the event, its self-referential Gödelian acronym reading LAME Ain't a Mp3 Encoder has enough protective charm is a moot point). It is also not to be feared that such popular players as Winamp or the Musicmatch Jukebox will in future be distributed free-of-charge only without an MP3 decoder: Nullsoft as well as Musicmatch are among the official licensees of MP3(Pro), in the case of Musicmatch this statement also applies to its integrated encoder. Whatever the merits, if any, of the changes in licensing conditions, Mr. Emmett Plant, CEO by profession of Xiph.org Foundation has expressed his considerable delight at the turn of events. In an open letter[6] he thanked Thomson Multimedia. "Thank you for the huge amount of free advertising to our benefit created by your announcement that licensing conditions had changed," Mr. Plant wrote. The letter closes with: "We support all actions on the part of Thomson that make it plain that MP3 costs money. Once again thank you and good luck." Unlike MP3, Ogg Vorbis, recently published in its version 1.0 (according to its developers' statements), is free of patent protection and subject to the GNU Public License; hence, even in future no license fees of any sort would be due for this compression process. It is not a good idea as yet to rely exclusively on Ogg Vorbis, however: Even if Ogg Vorbis manages to close the quality gap between it and MP3 or even manages to get ahead of the latter, it will still take some time before Ogg-capable portable players make their appearance as hardware. (Robert W. Smith) / (jk[7]/c't) URL of this article: http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/data/jk-28.08.02-008/ Links in this article: [1] http://www.slashdot.org [2] http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20010331223305/www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/swde… [4] http://www.iis.fhg.de/ [5] http://www.codingtechnologies.com/ [6] http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/openletter.html [7] mailto:jk(a)ct.heise.de -------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 by Verlag Heinz Heise

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Re: Return value GetStockObject
by Fabian Cenedese 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

> > In my app I try to get a handle to a system font with following call: > > HGDIOBJ hobj=GetStockObject(ANSI_FIXED_FONT); > > If the call succeeds it should return a handle to the requested object, > > otherwise zero. In Windows I get something like 0x018A000E (looks ok), > > but in Wine I get 0x0000009E. Even not zero I can't imagine that this is > > a valid handle (address). ANSI_FIXED_FONT is never really used in Wine, > > only SYSTEM_FONT. > > Is this an error or am I barking up the wrong tree? > >In Wine, handles are not (yet) all void * (see bug #90). Even then, it >doesn't mean a handle is a valid heap address; I know there are a couple >places in Wine where they are used as an index in an array locating all >objects of a kind. It doesn't exactly follow the Windows convention, but >I think handles are supposed to be passed back to APIs, not handled >(dereferenced) directly by apps. > >So 0x0000009E doesn't strike me as bad. If you use it in calls to font >APIs, does it work correctly? With this returned handle I try to fill a structure with GetObject: HGDIOBJ hobj=GetStockObject(ANSI_FIXED_FONT); LOGFONT lfSys; int ret=GetObject(hobj, sizeof(lfSys), &lfSys); (Windows returns 36) After that lfSys has all the info about this font. In Windows the members are filled nicely, lfSys.lfFaceName is "Courier". In Wine GetObject returns 60 (for whatever reason), and lfSys.lfFaceName is empty. Now this could mean that the handles are invalid or that there is something wrong with my fonts. Thanks Fabi

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RE: removing mp3 code
by Patrik Stridvall 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

> Apparently distributing even mp3 decoders is not royaltee > free anymore, > according to the slashdot thread and the Thomson MultiMedia pages. > > So we probably should remove the msacm mp3 decoder we include. :( At the very least we should make it compile option that is by default disabled. I don't think we need to go that far as to remove it. IIRC LAME an mp3 ENCODER (that was non royalty free even before) got around it by only distributing source code and so can we. BTW: Why do we include a mp3 decoder in the Wine tree? Why not just link to an external library? I can't see maintaining a mp3 decoder being in the best intrest of Wine anyway patents or not...

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(HELP) cannot run tests anymore
by Martin Wilck 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

$ make test /home/martin/Software/Wine/TMP/wine/miscemu/wine: cannot find 'tests/kernel32_test.exe.so' make: *** [tests/alloc.ok] Fehler 1 What am I doing wrong? I have tried this and that, but I don't seem to be able to run the tests. This happens for any tests I try. It seems that wine isn't looking for "tests/kernel32_test.exe.so" below the current directory. Martin -- Martin Wilck Phone: +49 5251 8 15113 Fujitsu Siemens Computers Fax: +49 5251 8 20409 Heinz-Nixdorf-Ring 1 mailto:Martin.Wilck(a)Fujitsu-Siemens.com D-33106 Paderborn http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/primergy

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Re: Need to know some macro values
by Andriy Palamarchuk 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

Dmitry, one of the ERROR_ constant values you provided to me looks suspicious: ERROR_AUDITING_DISABLED c0090001 All other error codes have much lesser values (the biggest is 14011 - 0x36bb). The value for this error code reminds me values for STATUS_ constants. Could you check if this is correct value? Is it definend in header file with other ERROR_ constants or with STATUS_ constants? Thank you for help, Andriy __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com

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Keyboard Switching
by Supphachoke Suntiwichaya 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

Hi I made Thai keyboard layout and compiled but I can't switch to thai char.. I use th in X but it not support X thai key input.. Help me.. Serious..! MrChoke -- ========================================== Supphachoke Suntiwichaya WWW:http://jedi.links.nectec.or.th/~mrchoke UIN:10509387 TEL:+66-1-5408959 Love Me Love Linux.... ===========================================

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Press: A couple articles about Wine products
by Francois Gouget 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

I have added a couple entries to WineHQ's press references: http://www.winehq.com/about/index.php?press Let me know if you know of other Wine-related articles or announcements that you think would be worth mentioning there. * August 19, 2002 - TransGaming TransGaming and TimeGate Partner to Port KOHAN http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=43 * August 14, 2002 - CodeWeavers CodeWeavers CrossOver Office Wins 'Best Desktop Office Solution' At LinuxWorld 2002 http://www.codeweavers.com/about/press_releases/?id=20020814 * August 13, 2002 - CodeWeavers CodeWeavers Unveils CrossOver Office Server Edition for Solaris and Linux thin clients http://www.codeweavers.com/about/press_releases/?id=20020813 * August 6, 2002 - DesktopLinux CrossOver Office 1.2 review: Quicken and QuickBooks and Visio, oh my! (on Linux, that is) http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2282537026.html -- Francois Gouget fgouget(a)free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/ f u kn rd ts, ur wy 2 gky 4 ur wn gd.

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Re: CVS wine/ dlls/gdi/win16drv/font.c dlls/gdi/win16d ...
by Duane Clark 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

Xilinx again:-) This patch http://cvs.winehq.com/patch.py?id=1030574123182059719300927 causes a bunch of error messages when scrolling the main window in fpga_editor. The scrolling however works fine. This is repeated for every "sliver" (or whatever that is called) as the window is scrolled. trace:nonclient:WIN_UpdateNCRgn hwnd 2005a [1e12] hrgn 0000, unc 0005, ncf 0 err:region:CombineRgn Invalid rgn=0000

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WIN_Handle{16,32} questions
by Michael Stefaniuc 29 Aug '02

29 Aug '02

Hello, while converting HWND to a void* i've seen that the WIN_Handle{16,32} functions were used (but not everywhere) to do the conversion HWND16 <--> HWND. WIN_Handle16 is declared and implemented in include/win.h and WIN_Handle32 is also declared in include/win.h but implemented in windows/win.c . I have used both functions with success in dlls/user/, windows/, controls/ but i would have to link to windows/win.c to make that work for other dlls too. Assuming that WIN_Handle{16,32} are not windows funtions (a search on google has given only links to wine pages) i would do following: - rename WIN_Handle{16,32} to HWND_{16,32} to make the naming consistent to the othe handle conversions - maybe remove the declaration of the two functions from include/win.h (or at least don't include win.h where it isn't yet used) - define HWND_16 as macro like the other HANDLE_16 macros and put it directly in the files where it's needed - HWND_32 has to do a little bit more work then the other HANDLE_32 macros and i would keep it as function. This means it has to be duplicated in every dll that needs it and one of the *16.c files in the dll directory would be the place to put it in. Comments? bye michael -- Michael Stefaniuc Tel.: +49-711-96437-199 System Administration Fax.: +49-711-96437-111 Red Hat GmbH Email: mstefani(a)redhat.com Hauptstaetterstr. 58 http://www.redhat.de/ D-70178 Stuttgart

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Re: Patch to restore iconified window
by Alexandre Julliard 28 Aug '02

28 Aug '02

Duane Clark <dclark(a)akamail.com> writes: > Unlike most other apps, when iconified fpga_editor triggers > X11DRV_ShowWindow() with a cmd==SW_HIDE, to hide the window. When > X11DRV_MapNotify() was subsequently called, it did nothing because > WS_VISIBLE was not set. This patch fixes that. > > I've been using this patch with everything I run for about 5 months now. > > Log message: > Fix restoring of windows that were iconified with SW_HIDE. Well, SW_HIDE is supposed to hide the window, not iconify it, so we are not supposed to get a MapNotify at this point. What is probably missing is proper handling for hiding an iconified window. -- Alexandre Julliard julliard(a)winehq.com

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