[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Dynamic plugins loading

[Vladimir Pantelic]

On 11/07/2010 11:41 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 5:30 AM, Alex Converse <alex.converse at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It all depends on how you define "care about Fedora." If by "care
>> about Fedora" you mean FFmpeg builds and runs on fedora then yes we do
>> care about Fedora. In fact FFmpeg builds and runs on Fedora better
>> than Windows whose user base dwarves that of Fedora. If by "care about
>> Fedora" you mean will bend over backwards to arbitrary Fedora policies
>> to be included in their software distribution then, while I can't
>> speak for everyone, I don't "care" about Fedora. By that definition I
>> also don't care about Windows.
> 
> Care about Fedora = Care whether FFmpeg can be included in Fedora
> 
> Anyway, Michael Niedermayer says you do care about Fedora, which means
> if Fedora requests for dynamic plugin loading, you would implement it,
> right? Or you don't trust your leader?

Fedora is either:

1) anti SW patents, then it ships no patented SW and does not encourage
users at all to use patented SW by installing "plugins".

or

2) does not want to expose itself legally due to patented SW, in that
case it does not ship patented SW by default, but has some "extra"
repo where people can click and install the missing pieces, in
that case a pragmatic approach like many other distros do is
quite simple to implement - no dynamic plugins needed.

It seems to me, Fedora, is neither 1) nor 2)....


And, if you really insist on "dynamic" activation of patented code,
how about we put all patented codecs and dsp functions under
if(allow_patented_code()) {...} and Fedora can easily dlopen
a lib that just includes:

int allow_patented_code(void) { return 1; }

as the only function.