(posted in the General forum, to enable follow-ups)
BASS 2.3.0.2 has been released on Monday, and is available from http://www.un4seen.com. In particular, it fixes a number of bugs in the MP3 and OGG decoders. You should be able to replace the DLL distributed with mAirList by this new version.
The author now offers an alternative version of the DLL, also included in the BASS zip archive, that comes without its own MP3 decoder but uses the one provided by Windows. Starting with mAirList 2.0.6 and mAirList 2.1.8, I will include this alternative BASS.DLL in the official mAirList distribution. I don’t know any details about the performance or stability of that codec compared to the BASS-internal one, but you should not notice any difference.
Motiviation:
The author of any MP3-playback-enabled application is obliged to pay a royalty fee to the holders of the MP3 patent. The fee is $0.75 per copy, with a mininum annual (!) fee of $15,000. It is obvious that I’m neither willing nor able to pay this. If you don’t believe it, look here: http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
With the alternative BASS.DLL version using the Windows-built-in decoder, there is no royalty fee to pay for me. The MP3 license is covered by the Windows license then (which is to say, Microsoft paid for the decoder already). This is why the official mAirList distribution will include the alternative BASS.DLL from now on.
Torben
PS: Whenever you have the ability to vote against software patents, go for it! Or we will face this problem regularly, one day.
(DRM-free) WMA support in mAirList has relied on BASSWMA.DLL and an installed Media Player ever since.
Supporting DRM-enabled WMA playback is a little tricky. I would need to obtain a license from Microsoft, and create a special BASSWMA.DLL for this purpose. The license seems to be free, however, I would need a digitally signed certificate from Verisign or a similary company in order to receive the files from Microsoft. That would cost around $200 to $400. Read this post in the BASS forum: http://un4seen.com/forum/?topic=3194
So far, noone ever seriously asked for WMA DRM support in mAirList, at least none of the few commercial users. If you would like to see DRM support in mAirList, find some fellow users who are willing to give a donation, and I will obtain such a license.
Presumably Thomson have always been able to charge these royalties, so I’m wondering why the BASS author is ‘suddenly’ highlighting this issue and making a ‘decoder-free’ version of his DLLs?
(My guess is that the Thomson people have ‘leaned’ on him recently!)
It just seems like peculiar timing. BASS has been around and very publicly visible for some years now; and the Thomson patents for even longer than that. Surely (?) Thomson knew about BASS long before now?
shrug<
The only other reason I can think of is that Thomson are only now starting to put pressure on the authors of much-used libraries like BASS. I wouldn’t like to be the guys who wrote LAME right now, for example (!).
The Thomson license applies to applications, but BASS.DLL is a library. The BASS.DLL author does not need to obtain a license. But all of the people using his DLL have to. (Although Thomson seems to tolerate freeware and open source software.)
This is a major issue for any shareware developer using BASS.DLL. It has been discussed several times in the BASS forums. Then Ian offered to provide a non-mp3-decoder version of his DLL. And here we are.
The good thing is that I did not have to change any single line of code. The mp3-free DLL is fully compatible and interchangable with the ordinary DLL. (Read between the lines!)
(DRM-free) WMA support in mAirList has relied on BASSWMA.DLL and an installed Media Player ever since.
Supporting DRM-enabled WMA playback is a little tricky. I would need to obtain a license from Microsoft, and create a special BASSWMA.DLL for this purpose. The license seems to be free, however, I would need a digitally signed certificate from Verisign or a similary company in order to receive the files from Microsoft. That would cost around $200 to $400. Read this post in the BASS forum: WMA DRM issues...
So far, noone ever seriously asked for WMA DRM support in mAirList, at least none of the few commercial users. If you would like to see DRM support in mAirList, find some fellow users who are willing to give a donation, and I will obtain such a license.
Torben
Torben is it just an SSL certificate that you need?
Just to say I’m using 2.0.7 here with the new BASS, with no problems nor any noticeable difference in sound quality.
I do have several MP3-capable codecs installed on my mAirList PC though, so I’ll need to check which decoder it’s actually using now (if that’s of any interest? probably not! ).
).