<P>FLAC is currently in the alpha stage. The current version is 0.3. The format is well defined but may change enough before becoming beta to break older streams. It also has not gone through enough testing yet to be considered archival quality. You should keep those two things in mind when using any alpha or beta versions of FLAC.</P>
<P>That said, we intend to settle on the format quickly, then start releasing beta versions. If you use FLAC and have suggestions or bugs, please <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=13478">join the mailing list</A> or <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=13478">developers group</A> and help us move to an official 1.0 version.</P>
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Coder. The FLAC project consists of:
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<UL>
<LI>the stream format</LI>
<LI>libFLAC, which implements a reference encoder, stream decoder, and file decoder</LI>
<LI>flac, which is a command-line wrapper around libFLAC to encode and decode .flac files</LI>
<LI>input plugins for various music players (Winamp, XMMS, and more in the works)</LI>
</UL>
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<P>
"Free" means that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain (the FLAC project reserves the right to set the FLAC specification and certify compliance), and that neither the FLAC format nor any of the implemented encoding/decoding methods are covered by any patent. It also means that the source for libFLAC is available under the <AHREF="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.html">LGPL</A> and the sources for flac and the plugins are available under the <AHREF="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html">GPL</A>.
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<P>
See the <AHREF="features.html">features page</A>, <AHREF="documentation.html">documentation page</A>, or <AHREF="format.html">FLAC format page</A> for more info, the <AHREF="comparison.html">comparison page</A> to see how the reference encoder measures up, or the <AHREF="goals.html">goals page</A> for what the FLAC project hopes to achieve.
Visit the <AHREF="download.html">download page</A> for links to the source code or pre-built binaries, or go directly to the <AHREF="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/flac/">source</A> on SourceForge.
The documentation is available online as well as in the distributions. The general installation and usage documentation for flac and the plugins is <AHREF="documentation.html">here</A>. For a detailed description of the FLAC format and reference encoder see the <AHREF="format.html">FLAC format page</A>.
I came up with FLAC because no audio compression format I could find did everything I needed. Since I couldn't mash them all together (most are closed-source), I solidified all my requirements (now the FLAC <AHREF="goals.html">goals</A>) and wrote the first implementation. I intended to open-source it from the beginning for two reasons: 1) so that people who knew more about audio compression than me could help improve it; and 2) I wanted to give something back to the OS community, whose huge body of work I rely on so much.
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<P>
So I started the FLAC project on SourceForge as soon as I had a relatively complete first implementation. Now I'm the maintainer of the FLAC project. You can get in touch with me about it through the <AHREF="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=13478">mailing list</A> or <AHREF="mailto:jcoalson@users.sourceforge.net">directly</A>
<TR><TDBGCOLOR="#EEEED4"><SMALL><FONTFACE="Lucida,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial"><AHREF="news.html#20001101">10-Dec-2000</A> :<BR> FLAC <AHREF="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/flac/">debuts</A> on SourceForge<BR></FONT></SMALL></TD></TR>
