Would you like to offer you legal opinion on #6 of the LAME technical FAQ?

scook
Would you like to offer you legal opinion on #6 of the LAME technical FAQ?

I am not a lawyer, but have worked in and around software development organizations continuously since 1974, so I have some experience with this.  I don't have an opinion about the validity of LAME's claim.  Obviously Cakewalk made a decision to avoid litigation altogether by paying the ransom to the MP3 people, and it appears that is $2.50 for the encoder. They absorbed the $0.75 fee for the decoder, but didn't want to absorb the $2.50 fee for the encoder!?  That's my interpretation.  If that is a correct interpretation, I would say that is very short-sighted.
 
Again, I don't believe there is any royalty or any other kind of fee to LAME under the GPL.  Have you seen anything that indicates there would be a payment to LAME?

If, as you say, you have worked in and around software development organizations then you know there is more cost that just the license fee. Even using an existing library does not make it cost free and the company is not a charity. Since you have industry experience, do you have a estimate of what the fully costed inclusion of the feature would be? Where does payment to LAME come into the picture? That is your creation. This is far from the first thread on this subject and sadly will not be the last. Don't want to use the integrated mp3 sells, no problem it is not the only solution.

scook
If, as you say, you have worked in and around software development organizations then you know there is more cost that just the license fee. Even using an existing library does not make it cost free and the company is not a charity. Since you have industry experience, do you have a estimate of what the fully costed inclusion of the feature would be? Where does payment to LAME come into the picture? That is your creation. This is far from the first thread on this subject and sadly will not be the last. Don't want to use the integrated mp3 sells, no problem it is not the only solution.

Obviously producing a software product has costs, and that often includes licensing components.   Cakewalk has revenue to cover that.  How much did it cost Cakewalk to develop take lanes and automation lanes, or the ProChannel capability.  A lot more than the MP3 fees, I would bet.  Yet they made the marketing decision to not charge for every little feature.  They did develop a coherent pricing strategy with three tiers of the product.  It certainly would make sense for the entry level product to not include MP3 encoder because there is such a small margin in that case.  But I don't see any marketing logic whatsoever to position the "Producer" version of the product as "everything you will ever need" (my words, not theirs, but that is the product positioning) and then nick the users for $20 for what is a $2.50 line item internally on a product with a list price of $500 and a lifetime revenue opportunity of probably $2000 or more per customer.
 
That isn't the kind of marketing reasoning I would ever accept from a product manager.  Would you risk a $2000 relationship over a $2.50 item?
 
Granted, most people wouldn't walk away from Cakewalk over a $20 charge.  But it is a very competitive market.  Sometimes it is these little things that start the customer on the path of moving to another supplier.  Why even take that chance? 

You answered your own question. No own would walk away from buying the product because there was a nominal one-time licensing fee for an optional encoding feature. A feature that can be integrated with freely available third-party solutions. So they would not be taking a chance at all, right? I have yet to see anyone mention the mp3 license as a reason for not buying another Cakewalk product but I suppose it might have happened. Moreover, on more than one occasion, Cakewalk has effectively given the license away by providing store credit to existing customers which could have been used to purchase the license or any other product for sale at the store. What might be interesting would be to hear the former managements justification for the decision in the late 90's to discontinue including the mp3 license. There was a time when it was included in their DAW products. I use the license that was included with ProAudio 9.

 
If I need to create mp3 files, I always do the conversion outside of SONAR.
 
And I've never got better results than using my ancient, but trusty, copy of Pinnacle/Steinberg MyMP3Pro (v.4).
 
It gives you the choice between using either a Lame encoder or a Fraunhofer encoder, and I have to say, the Fraunhofer does a much better job than the Lame. At 320kbps, it's very difficult to tell the difference between the mp3 and the original wav file.
 
I think they gave up making it after version 5, but if anyone comes across a copy sitting around, it's well worth getting hold of.
 
Now, if anyone knows how to 'extract' the Fraunhofer encoder and use it inside of SONAR, I'd be really grateful!