Re: MPlayer

[Sam Hocevar <sam@zoy.org>]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004, Carlos Laviola wrote:

> As mentioned before in the thread, mplayer can't be included in Debian
> because large portions of code it relies upon, even if they're
> released under a free license(http://ffmpeg.sf.net) are based on, or
> similar to, patented algorithms, which makes it a problem for us. It's
> the same thing that keeps LAME out of Debian, as far as I know.

   A patent is not the end of the world; Debian only refrains from
distributing patented software if the patent is actually actively
enforced (such as the MP3 encoding patents in the LAME case). IMHO
ffmpeg is not really troublesome, because it does not include MP3
encoding or AAC encoding/decoding functions.

-- 
Sam.