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Winamp glitch may benefit open source
News A recently disclosed vulnerability in an old version of the popular Winamp media player could provide a boost for the royalty-free alternative to the MP3 format known as Ogg Vorbis. Having Ogg Vorbis work with the new version of Winamp out of the...
[May 2, 2002, 11:58]
escore #01 trial
Downloads Sound Vision Library is proud to offer a free trial version of escore.escore provides a wide range of loops, logos and tags specifically created for Internet and multimedia application developers.escore #01 trial is offered with a freeware royalty...
[March 17, 2006, 7:00]
Ogg Vorbis plays with hardware support
News Ogg Vorbis, an audio format created to provide a royalty-free alternative to MP3, could at last be making its way into portable digital audio players. Software and hardware companies who make MP3 player and encoder software, by contrast, must pay...
[September 4, 2002, 13:31]
W3C rejigs image format
News Once LZW patent-owner Unisys announced its intention to seek royalties for the use of GIF graphics in software applications, free-software developers created PNG as a royalty free alternative. A key Internet standards group issued this week a...
[November 12, 2003, 12:20]
Apple, HP oppose W3C patent plan
News While the current draft patent policy does state a 'preference' for royalty-free standards, the ready availability of a RAND option presents too easy an alternative for owners of intellectual property who may seek to use the standardisation...
[October 15, 2001, 9:16]
Microsoft seeks EC clarity on licensing fees
News Vinje added that protocol specifications designed to aid interoperability are typically licensed royalty-free in the software industry. A monitoring trustee hired by the Commission is recommending royalty payments of zero to one percent for the...
[April 24, 2007, 10:30]
Microsoft photo standard comes into focus
News Microsoft's royalty-free commitment will help the JPEG committee foster widespread adoption of the specification and help ensure that it can be implemented by the widest possible audience," the organisation said, encouraging others to take that...
[August 1, 2007, 8:09]
GIF patent to expire, will PNG survive?
News A patent underlying one of the Web's most popular graphics formats is set to expire later this month, raising the question of whether a rival, open-source format, created as a royalty-free alternative, will become obsolete.
[June 9, 2003, 12:24]
Oasis sets out stall on Web procurement
News Oasis, which launched in 1993 under the name SGML Open, has recently taken on new prominence with the emergence of Web services and a concurrent controversy over whether Web standards should be royalty-free or should include the use of licensed...
[April 29, 2003, 10:17]
.Net patent could stifle standards effort
News The W3C is in the process of developing a policy that would let the organisation include patented technology in its standards as long as companies agree to provide the technology royalty-free. More and more, the patent debate is pitting companies...
[February 11, 2003, 7:43]
Sun, HP say SCO's claim is not relevant
News SCO, which acquired the rights to Unix a few years ago, is alleging that part of the Unix source code was copied into Linux and has sent out letters seeking royalty payments from computer companies and large corporations using Linux.
[May 20, 2003, 13:16]
Video format turns to open-source developers for aid
News Video-compression provider On2 Technologies plans to announce on Monday that it will blend its video codec with Ogg Vorbis, a royalty-free alternative to the MP3 format. Under an agreement between On2 and Xiph.org Foundation, a nonprofit that...
[June 24, 2002, 8:42]
Open-source rival to MP3 released
News Ogg Vorbis is completely royalty-free, meaning companies can incorporate the technology into their software without cost. The keepers of a patent on MPEG-4 just culminated months of hashing out a royalty plan for their technology that would...
[July 22, 2002, 9:25]
OpenDocument wins more fans
News It can be used royalty-free by anyone. Microsoft has proposed an alternative format called Open XML in answer to objections that the Office file formats are not sufficiently open. OpenDocument Format (ODF), the open file format for office documents...
[July 28, 2006, 13:55]
Microsoft offers to help Firefox into Vista
News The company has finally realised that "ultimately… proprietary technologies will always get replaced by an industry-supported, open-standard alternative, hence the embrace of RSS, Open Source Lab, XML and royalty-free access to Open XML", posted...
[August 22, 2006, 13:40]
MP3.com: Sorry, no free royalties
News As consumers grapple with content filters on Napster that may make it harder to find free tunes on the Internet, thousands of would-be rock stars got their own bad news on Friday when Web pioneer MP3.com said it plans to start charging for an...
[March 19, 2001, 8:45]
New backers join datacentre standards group
News The description will be available to companies free of charge and without royalty fees. And Microsoft, which has proposed its own Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based alternative to DCML, called System Definition Model, is not a member.
[November 18, 2003, 16:15]
Gateway's plan to bring back Amiga
News The San Diego PC maker's original plan was to use the patents as a bargaining chip in royalty negotiations with other PC makers. Amiga, he says, will operate independently from its parent, and be free to strike its own agreements.
[August 12, 1999, 14:59]
MP3 alternative gets Real
News The fact that the user will almost automatically get Ogg on their desktop means that there is a patent-free and royalty-free audio format that everyone can play on every computer," said Bruce Perens, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative.
[July 26, 2002, 9:36]
AOL enters browser wars
News Microsoft last year granted AOL a seven-year royalty-free licence to use IE technology in its products. Meanwhile, alternative browsers such as open-source Firefox and Apple's Safari offer more features than IE and are gaining a following among...
[October 11, 2004, 10:40]
