2 questions about easytag

[Linus Walleij]

On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Christoph Wickert wrote:

> 1. Why is easytag in extras? The source tarball contains files from
> mpg321.

AFAIK it only use portions of mpg321 that are needed to extract metadata 
from the MPEG stream, such as bitrate and frame types, thus determining 
the play length. The MPEG stream format is, I believe unproblematic, it is 
when you populate it with Layer 3 audio ("mp3") and encode/decode that 
that the patent problems start.

So the portions from mpg321 used are safe, thus it can stay in the extras 
- patents does not contaminate by proximity, the fact that other files in 
mpg321 are problematic does not make these files problematic.

Linus