Re: [RFR] templates://mplayer/{mplayer.templates}

[Moritz Muehlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org>]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 04:43:03PM +0200, A Mennucc wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 06:54:01PM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> >  Template: mplayer/rtc
> >  Type: boolean
> >  Default: false
> 
> Sorry..  this is old and obsolete, and will be removed in the next
> version of mplayer ; my fault, I forgot to mention before.
>   
> >  Template: mplayer/install_codecs
> >  Type: note
> 
> As you mention in the other bug report, this template may be substituted 
> by a direct question "do you want to download additional binary codecs?"
> 
> But I do not know if this is safe : I remember a similar situation
> when libdvdread offered to download libdvdcss , and this spurred
> a lot of controversy.

I think it would be alright from a legal perspective. While offering a download
of libdvdcss meant potential circumvention of copy protection, the downloads of
binary codecs may only infringe software patents if they're applicable. (Leaving
all technical downsides aside).

The real question is, whether this is actually needed nowadays. AFAICS rv40 has
been the last remaining major codec not available in libavcodec, and as it
is currently being merged into ffmpeg it'll be available in MPlayer soon.
So, we should probably rather drop it completely and only mention the additional
codecs in README.Debian?

Cheers,
        Moritz