On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 04:27:13PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote: > Hi ppl, > > Has anyone taken a look at packaging avifile, the X/QT AVI player, available > from http://divx.euro.ru/ ? I've been using it recently, and I could package > it easily, but its licensing situation is a bit deranged :) > > Quoting doc/LICENSING from the source: > > The most obvious problem is the fact that library uses closed-source > Win32 DLLs. It can be considered to be 'creating derived work' by > including these DLLs into GPL'ed code. In other words, library may > seem to be 'linked' with these proprietary binaries. That's actually > a fringe case - the strict definition of 'linking' does not exist yet. > I prefer to think of the DLLs as 'plug-ins', which are separate from > main library and voluntary to use. That's why I distribute binaries and > sources in different packages - you do not need binaries to compile library > and even to run some test programs. One can someday rewrite DLLs using C/C++ > and thus make AVIFile library completely platform independent. > > The DLLs themself are freeware - you can easily get them from lots of > other places. Their licenses typically do not say anything explicitly > about this way of using them. I believe there's nothing wrong in it. > > This project includes GSM 6.1 audio decoder, which is taken from XAnim. > XAnim is licensed as 'free for non-commercial use' - not compatible with > (L)GPL. That part needs to be rewritten to resolve this issue. > > The situation with DLLs would require putting avifile packages in contrib, I > think, because although they're not formally linked, you get little or no > functionality from avifile without them. > > The last paragraph clearly makes it impossible for us to legally distribute > avifile, it's like the old KDE/QT1 mess. Does anyone volunteer for rewriting > this? :) Well, personaly i think this means you put avifile in main, and suggest the librarys. You should double check(even though the author says so) that you are allowed to re-distribute the .dll's. Check with the author of each one if need be. > > -- > Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org > > -- Erik Bernhardson journey@jps.net -- It is better to remain silent and be considered a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Abraham Lincoln
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