An AMBE open source compatible codec?

First some history:

Depending on your point of view, Jon Lech Johansen is either your hero or adversary. To the copyright industry, Jon Lech Johansen has been a detriment to their policy of control since the advent of DeCSS (Decrypt Content Scrambling System.)

At the age of 15, “DVD Jon” wrote a computer program that allowed users to copy DVDs. Then he posted it on the Internet. A Norwegian private school awarded him a prize for making an outstanding contribution to society. The Norwegian government indicted him.

Jon spent 3 long years in the Norwegian courts proving his innocence. The American movie industry pressured the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to press charges against Jon Lech Johansen in 2000 for allegedly bypassing the CSS copy protection on DVDs.

Early on; Bruce Perens, K6BP, amateur radio and open source advocate voiced concerns about D-Star’s use of a proprietary vocoder. Asking; does it really fit into the spirit of the hobby? Bruce makes a strong argument that an Open Source vocoder needs to be developed.

In May 2008, he announced that he will investigate the development of an alternative codec. The Codec2 Project: Next-Generation Audio Codecs and Vocoders for Two-Way Radio.

In August 2009 David Rowe, VK5DGR, began designing and implementing a replacement codec under the GPL.

“Proprietary codecs typically have small, novel parts of the algorithm protected by patents. However proprietary codecs also rely heavily on large bodies of public domain work. The patents cover perhaps 5% of the codec algorithms. Proprietary codec designers did not invent most of the algorithms they use in their codec. Typically, the patents just cover enough to make designing an interoperable codec very difficult. These also tend to be the parts that make their codecs sound good.”

Two open source compatible codec’s that come to mind:

Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer Society originally controlled the patents and licensing of the MP3 audio codec. Tip-toeing around the patented parts of the algorithms the LAME encoder was developed as free software application used to encode audio into the MP3 file format.

You might be surprised to find out that formats like Mp3 are actually someone's intellectual property, because the vast majority of Mp3 players and encoders don't pay royalties and are based on easily available implementations that have been out for years.

The DivX codec (used to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.) was actually an attempt by the now defunct U.S. retailer Circuit City to develop a video rental system requiring special discs and players.

The Xvid codec became a primary free and open source competitor offering comparable quality. It too was developed by tip-toeing around the patented parts of the DivX algorithms.

Many codecs, containers, file formats and other systems have been hacked to pieces and continue to be despite being the property of one party.

GIF images (up till 2006 when the patents expired) used a patented LZW compression scheme.

PDF is owned by Adobe but has been implemented by numerous others. there are many open-source and non-approved PDF viewers, editors and creators.

Unauthorized FLV players and converters exist as well. The same can be seen with real audio, real video, various Quicktime codecs, Dolby Digital AC3, AAC, and many others.

Think about it...... Do you like your freedoms? Thank those who have taken the time reverse engineered something. Welcome those types with open hands to the hobby. Those types of experimenters are just what this hobby once was and still can be.

{Update May 2010}
Interestingly enough the Digital Speech Decoder and xMBE codec library - can decode and recover the audio from P25 (Phase 1) IMBE, D-Star (AMBE), as well as Mototrbo/DMR (AMBE+2).  The open source software was unveiled by anonymous authors in May 2010.   It seems to have possibly stemmed from the May 2008 OP25 project, that provides a software IMBE voice encoder/decoder.  APCO Project 25 traces back to the early 1990's required publication of the IMBE and AMBE codec algorithms, which of course is how both projects came about.

It is important to note that so far there have been no take-down or patent violations filed from DVSI for these hobbyist adventures.  It should also be noted that the important patent claims may expire in 2015.  Basically all patents covering the AMBE-1000 chip have either expired or are not enforceable, due to disclosures made by DVSI.  See Bruce Peren's AMBE Exposed document for further information. 

It should also be mentioned that for most U.N. member states; non-commercial/research usage of patented technology is covered by exceptions on the definition of "patent infringement." Ref

Also worth reading: The Right To Reverse Engineer