Re: mplayer, the time has come

[A Mennucc <mennucc1@debian.org>]

MJ Ray told me I never properly answered this question; sorry. Here is 
my answer

Glenn Maynard wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 10:08:42PM +0100, Sebastien NOEL wrote:
>  
>
> > *   You removed libmpdvdkit2/ because US laws suck.
> >    Why don't you remove also libfaad2/ which is full of patents problems ?
> >    (according to /usr/share/doc/ffmpeg/patents.txt.gz)
> >    
>
> I hope that isn't a file with descriptions of patents--anyone who reads
> such a thing would risk increased patent liability.  I'd rather not look
> for myself to find out, though.
>
> That said, are the patents supposedly affecting libfaad2 actively being
> enforced?  Debian's general policy on software patents is to ignore ones
> which aren't, since that's the only policy that allows anyone to do
> anything at all.
>  

two answers

1)  libfaad2/ in mplayer is almost identical to src/libfaad  that is in 
xine-lib

2) yes, it seems (according to /usr/share/doc/ffmpeg/patents.txt.gz ) 
that in 2000 Dolby threatened
 the author of FAAC ( that contains libfaad), and he had to remove the 
binaries
 he was shipping from  faac.sf.net. Since then, AFAICT nothing happened

Since many distributions have been distributing xine and mplayer with 
libfaad inside, I guess
that the problem is not relevant

If somebody thinks otherwise, we should correct xine immediatly (before 
Sarge is released);
or otherwise somebody should explain me what is difference between xine 
and mplayer usage
of FAAC code.

a.