Digging a little more I found this excerpt :



"There are any number of open source tools that implement algorithms that require licensing (AC3, MPEG and DTS most recently). It would seem that they are on firm ground when the software is made available in source form only and you compile it for your own use because source code can be considered speech. When binaries are provided (no compiling required) the territory is more slippery even when there is no money changing hands (profit for one is not required to show loss by another.)



The continued existence of these tools depends as much on economic as legal considerations. Open source projects usually involve no one with deep enough pockets for the intellectual property owners to bother to sue. SCO-IBM being a contrary example.



The law is not clear enough to allow the repositories of such projects to be easily sanctioned either, so they continue to be available.*"



If that is right then just creating source for people to compile will probably be a wasted effort by me as not a lot of people will want to compile it and sign it themselves just for AC3 decoding.



Hopefully a player that has licensing deals with Dolby comes to PB that can handle AC3.