Xiph.org Releases Free Fixed-Point Vorbis Decoder

volsung writes "A lot of us want portable music players with Vorbis support, right? Well, Xiph.org has decided to help speed the process by releasing their integerized Vorbis decoder, named "Tremor," under a BSD-like license. Tremor is a Vorbis decoding library written for CPUs without floating point hardware, like most handheld devices use. It was previously a proprietary library--licensed by theKompany for their Sharp Zaurus player, among others--but now it's available for everyone to use. The release page also gives contact information for many of the popular hardware manufacturers. If you want Vorbis support in your hardware, now is the time to send some emails! (Also, please say thanks to the Xiph.org crew with a donation if you can.)"

Comments

Nice try, but wrong

[FreeUser]

You might not like it, but it's much more ideal (to the company) than GPL, and for most licensees it's just as good. In fact, the only people that don't like it are GPL zealots.

GPL 'zealots' as you so snidely call them (but, of course, its Microsoft entusiasts, isn't it?), and just about anyone who is interested in contributing their time and energy to products.

The communities which form up around Apple, Netscape, Microsoft, and Sun's licenses are positively anemic compared to the communities which have sprung up around both the BSD and GPLed licensed projects. Why? Because they give the users and the volunteer developers the least amount of freedom, and no guarantee that their work won't simply be seized from them (indeed, they generally rather state the opposite).

You are correct, I don't like it. Nor do the vast majority of volunteer developers and users, so much os that Mozilla changed its licensing scheme in order to attract developers (and succeeded by the way), as did Sun with their GPLed release of Open Office.

Does that make me a GPL zealot? Probably by your definition, since your definition appears to imply anyone not actively trying to malign the GPL is by definition a zealot. However, as one who publicly embraces numerous free licenses, including the BSD license and the GPL, I think I, and most free software enthusiasts, fall well outside of what both the dictionary and the average person would define as a "zealot."