Quoting Andrew Suffield (asuffield@users.sourceforge.net): > > URL: http://mplayer.sourceforge.net > I've been investigating the possibility of packaging mplayer for a > while now, and it is positively riddled with complexities. Yeah, I think I was too impulsive when ITP'ing mplayer, after reading your extensive report (thanks!) on what you already figured out, I kinda got scared to get chased by Black Helicopters and people in Black Suits... :) > Licensing issues. The code is *NOT* released under the GPL. It is in > an unknown state, being mostly GPL, but the opendivx code is not > (license unspecified). In fact, it's been suggested it's not really > opensource at all. This one will have to go to debian-legal at some > point. ---] Website [--- License: MPlayer incorporates a lot of code from other projects, but for now everything except the OpenDivX stuff is GPL. ----------------- My plan was to rip out OpenDivX support and package the rest so you would get a MPEG player by default, but installing the proprietary Win32 DLL's would get you DivX support too. DVD Decoding with libdecss is just too icky to bring in Debian, I don't even want to go there, so if people want mplayer to play DVD's they'd probably be best off apt-get source'ing mplayer and compiling the pkg themselves with libdecss support... > Possible patent issues, especially with .asf files and divx, and also > MPEG itself. debian-legal will have to look at this one too. I haven't > got around to looking into it yet. Pff.. Man, what have I started :) > Working on lib(de)css can theoretically get you arrested. That one > will take *ages* to clear -legal, and may not be allowed at all. I don't think Debian allows this pkg to be installed, but that was not my intention either :) > mplayer developers don't like binary packages, so don't expect a great > deal of sympathy from them. If it's true that mplayer actually needs to be recompiled on each specific CPU type to get some speed in it, then I understand why they don't want binary packages. > Further note that there is no *way* the ftpmasters will install this > without a statement from debian-legal. *grin* I think I read enough.. I will blow this off, I don't even have the time to investigate all these license / patent things. Although it is interresting... Thanks again, Sander. -- | Leven is 't meervoud van lef | -- Loesje
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