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Legal status of Rockbox and MP3

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Llorean:
I couldn't ever get what was defined as a "hardware" device and what was "software" from the license. My personal assumption had always been if there was a dedicated decoder (like the MAS in the Archos targets) it'd be hardware, but if the MP3s were decoded on a multipurpose microprocessor, like they are on the iRivers and so on, that it'd probably be "software". This was more from my personal definitions of Hardware and Software than any evidence elsewhere.

saratoga:

--- Quote from: Llorean on September 04, 2006, 07:02:35 PM ---I couldn't ever get what was defined as a "hardware" device and what was "software" from the license. My personal assumption had always been if there was a dedicated decoder (like the MAS in the Archos targets) it'd be hardware, but if the MP3s were decoded on a multipurpose microprocessor, like they are on the iRivers and so on, that it'd probably be "software". This was more from my personal definitions of Hardware and Software than any evidence elsewhere.

--- End quote ---

AFAIK the MAS is a general purpose microprocessor (or at least DSP) though.  It's called a hardware platform by Rockbox because we never figured out how to program it.  However, if we had purchased the compiler, we could load any codec we wanted to on there (well provided we could fit it in the very limited memory space available).  From what I gather, its a lot like the DSP built into the Ipod Video in the sense that it's programmable but only if you fork out the money for the compiler and kit.

AFAIK a true hardware decoder (IE a device that decoded without the use of a software decoder inside) has not been made for MP3.  Though if one exists I'd love to hear about it as these things are very interstesting to me!

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