hi I have uploaded a new version of the 'mplayer' package for Debian, namely version 1.0pre6-1 (Unfortunately it does not show yet in the new queue at http://qa.debian.org/~anibal/debian-NEW.html but it is also accessible at http://tonelli.sns.it/pub/mplayer/sarge ) I REALLY think that the time has come for mplayer to be part of Debian --- HISTORY and CURRENT STATUS There have been two main problems keeping mplayer out of Debian: licenses and copyrights. Licenses: the upstream code contains some code that is protected by (more or less) actively enforced licenses: DeCSS code to decode encrypted dvd; ffmpeg and OpenDivx code to en/decode MPEG4. Solution: the DeCSS is deleted from the package proposed for Debian (for this reason, I upload mplayer as a native package); whereas ffmpeg is not a problem anymore : the package 'ffmpeg' is in Debian already. The OpenDivx code is not there any more, see in section E.2 of docs, or http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mplayer-binary.html Copyrights: at some time in the past, a lot of code was added to mplayer without keeping due track (as GPL requires); this spurred a long and wild thread in debian and mplayer lists, about 5 years ago. Solution: lately, the mplayer team did a long and detailed work to track down the origin of all the code in MPlayer; the results are in the 'Copyright' file. --- PLEA Please, please I acknowledge that, in the past, there were many problems that prevented mplayer from entering Debian; these problems sometimes spurred flaming threads; I think that these problems are now solved; but some people would still write mails as "mplayer is a copyright mess" or "mplayer is so encumbered by patents it will never go in Debian". Please forget the past problems and check this package as it is now. --- POPULAR SUPPORT there have been many voices asking for mplayer to be in Debian Jan 05, F Dannemare: " what is now holding back software such as mplayer/mencoder, transcode and mjpegtools from entering Debian?" http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00721.html Goswin von Brederlow : "At least I would like to know whats up with mplayer now that ffmpeg is in Debian." http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg00136.html Jul 2004 , L Kaplan: "I didn't find any package for MPlayer on the main repository. I checked its license and found it to be GPL v2 (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/info.html) Any reason that it won't have a package?" http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/07/msg01522.html Jan 04, D Shearer, Re: Top 5 things that aren't in Debian but should be :-) "mplayer will definitely make the top 5, it illustrates some of the bottle-necks of Debian or better, of the upstream. When two perfect ones meet ;) " http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/01/msg00820.html M Krafft "So can we package it now for Debian?" http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/07/msg00942.html Moreover there have been many many ITP for mplayer. --- HISTORY the history of the effort to have MPlayer into Debian is a loooong one; we have uploaded many packages; the second-but-last time I prepared and/or uploaded a package was in Jul 2003 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/07/msg01633.html we received some feedback and we corrected all problems in mplayer 0.90 Mar 2004 : there was a nice and contructive thread started by http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/03/msg00235.html which suggested that mplayer was ready to be accepted (but for a minor concern expressed in http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/03/msg00243.html that was not considered too bad to reject the package). I then uploaded a package mplayer 1.0.cvs20030324-1 that was refused (in Aug 04) because /usr/share/doc/mplayer/copyright was incomplete; I uploaded a corrected version , and never received a reply. a. -- Andrea Mennucc "Ukn ow,Ifina llyfixe dmysp acebar.ohwh atthef"
Attachment:
pgpLATL3g1qzb.pgp
Description: PGP signature