Licensing problems for mpeg2vidcodec
Dear Mentors,
I would like to package mpeg2vidcodec, which the reference
implementation of the MPEG2 codec provided by the MPEG Software
Simulation Group[1]. It provides two binaries (mpeg2encode and
mpeg2decode), which are needed by ImageMagick to handle MPEG files.
However, the authors of this software seem to have disappeared without
leaving any forwarding address. Moreover, I have not been able to find
any information about the license it is placed under. The only thing I
can tell is that the tarball is distributed in many places over the
web (for example on the ImageMagick mirrors in the delegates
directory[2]) ; this is no proof, but it could indicate that Debian
could redistribute it too...
What would you advise me to do? I would really like to package this
codec since it could improve ImageMagick's usability a lot, but maybe
these licensing/distribution issues cannot be dealt with :/
FYI, there has already been an RFP[3] for mpeg2vidcodec, but it seems
to have been abandonned.
Thanks,
François
[1]http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=314757
[2]for example:
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/X11/graphics/ImageMagick/delegates/mpeg2vidcodec_v12.tar.gz
[3]http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=314757
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