# What happened to lame?



## joseche (May 17, 2012)

The port seems to be removed from the servers. I use pkg_add since I don't need to build or customize anything but a lot of packages with that dependency fail and I have checked manually on the ftp servers and I can't find it.


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## francis (May 17, 2012)

Hi *joseche*. According to the FreeBSD Freshports site the audio/lame package is marked as RESTRICTED (this port has some restrictions on it) due to patent issues, see; mp3licensing.com. The only way to get lame is to compile it from ports via the /usr/ports/audio/lame/ directory, but you mentioned that you do not need to build anything. The choice is yours.

Best regards!


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## joseche (May 18, 2012)

Sorry I didn't know about the licensing issues of MP3 decoders. Problem is I also use Mac and iTunes doesn't have support for OGG. So basically we are victims of the format war. I guess AAC is not a real solution?


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## OH (May 19, 2012)

*You* are victim of iTunes' restrictive functionality. I have very little Mac experience myself, but if I were you I'd search for replacement software that can use files constructed with audio/flac. I believe programs exist for Mac that will convert it, if so needed.


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## Beastie (May 19, 2012)

As you can see on their SourceForge page, "LAME is only distributed in source code form."

I don't understand why you have a problem with building it though? Just install all its dependencies (gettext, gmake, libiconv, libtool, nasm) as packages and then build lame using the port system. It's rather small so it shouldn't take more than a few minutes even on years old machines.


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## kpa (May 19, 2012)

VLC can play FLAC files just fine on OS X. Another option is XBMC.


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