Josselin Mouette wrote: > > - staying legal (that bunch of sources was legal because each "libs" were > > distinctable, but _what license would you have given to the binary?_) > This is not legal, at least when there the software includes some GPL > code. So free speech is not legal? > That doesn't prevent the binaries from working, using several packages > with different cpu optimisations. Many packages in Debian already work > this way. We call that method "hack". > You cannot distinguish binary and source redistribution this way. A > derived work is still a derived work when you only provide the source. "Derived work"? We are not talking about using GPL code in non-GPL software, but exactly its opposite. We had a lot of miscellaneous licensed code mixed up whose owners might have been mad if our software has just been "globally" GPL. > > - we wouldn't have been #1 > > - people wouldn't have a working movie player EVEN NOW > Wrong. No, true. I am not talking about the present. xine was (is?:) just a buggy piece of hunk that threw sig11s every minute, when MPlayer was the stablest movie player. The stuff I meant: half of the libavcodec and MPlayer developers are the same. They evolved together. If their developers behaved like debian developers do (no offense), we'd still be playing Indeo5 AVIs. > There have been several movie players around, which are much less > painful to install and which comply with the DFSG - and they are > included in the main Debian distribution. Amen. > And even with all its optimize-everything-or-die crap, mplayer doesn't > perform better. However, many people beg for its inclusion in Debian. Why? :) > > Ehh ;) > > Would you like an >500k diff included in the libmpeg2/ dir? :))) > A changelog is not necessary a diff. Huh? If someone wants that, he can do 'cvs -z9 log | less' What reason would be sufficient to duplicate the cvslog? Don't you want interlaced MPEG4 encoding more? (oh, DFSG... Well you can't watch movies with that, can you.) > With all that willingness from upstream, this will indeed make things > difficult. Life is difficult. > But if you want to be #1 (as your goal seems to be world domination), you > should consider doing the necessary steps to make your software available in > the binary GNU/Linux distributions. In the last two years neither of us felt the instant urge to get MPlayer into distros. And taking a look at freshmeat.net/stats and our download stats tells us we are doing the right thing :) > A user who can install a working xine package in 3 clicks won't care it runs > 0.001% slower, if it just works. A user who wants a movie player to install with 3 clicks can go use windows. > The Debian xine package doesn't use libavcodec (which is indeed illegal > in some countries AFAIK). LOL :))) Then what does it use? Win32 codecs? XVID? Have you ever used libavcodec? > > Success? > You have indeed proven that someone wanting to package mplayer will have > a hard time dealing with upstream. Interesting, Dominik (our "official" RPM packager) works in close contact with us, and never faced any hardships.. In fact, he is a developer with CVS write access. It's just when people come up with such ideas as 100% legal, angel-white distributions, that cut liba52, libavcodec, libmp3lame - and just can't understand why it is Bad. Just as Linus said on dri-devel, it would be better to go and _include_ things with unclear legality (S3TC), and see if it matters to anyone, than go and whine in the corner. -- Gabucino MPlayer Core Team
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