From aholtzma@ess4.engr.UVic.CA Sun, 27 Jun 1999 19:37:35 -0700
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 19:37:35 -0700
From: Aaron Holtzman aholtzma@ess4.engr.UVic.CA
Subject: [LinuxDVD] AC3 Decoder and licensing

Greetings all,

For those that don't know, I'm the author of the GPL'd AC-3 decoding package
that was released on the weekend.

My primary purpose for writing this package was to learn a bit about
perceptual audio coding. I noted that there were no free AC-3
decoders available, so I decided to write one (as opposed to starting
with MPEG-Audio or AAC). I didn't expect to walk into a mine field of
patent problems reminicent of MPEG-Audio encoders.

Regardless, the code is cooked and available. I'll be happy to support
and distribute the code as long as I am able to. We'll see what happens.

I have a sinking feeling this issue is going to end up on slashdot :)

cheers,
aaron

ps.

As an aside, I have a lot of experience working with the Berkeley MPEG
video code. One of the things on my todo list is to clean it up a lot
and provide a clean interface for hardware acceleration. But that's a
bit down the road right now. If someone starts something, I'll probably
join in :)