1 FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is
2 similar to MP3, but lossless. The FLAC project consists of:
4 * libFLAC, which implements reference encoders and decoders
5 * flac, a command-line wrapper around libFLAC to encode and decode .flac
7 * input plugins for various music players (Winamp, XMMS, and more in the
10 "Free" means that the specification of the stream format is in the public
11 domain (the FLAC project reserves the right to set the FLAC specification
12 and certify compliance), and that neither the FLAC format nor any of the
13 implemented encoding/decoding methods are covered by any patent. It also
14 means that the source for libFLAC is available under the LGPL and the
15 sources for flac and the plugins are available under the GPL.