[MPlayer-cvslog] r26723 - in trunk: Makefile av_opts.c av_opts.h

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 10:37:23AM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 03:07:44PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > IMO a simple central statement somewhere about license header less files is
> > enough, there should be no need to copy and paste the header into each
> > file.
> 
> We have already had this discussion for FFmpeg, which has a much clearer
> licensing situation than MPlayer.  Let me reiterate the main points that
> apply here:
> 
> 1) MPlayer is a patchwork of different libraries and files from diverse
> sources.  They have a multitude of different licensing terms.  Some of
> these files do have license headers, some do not.  However, not all
> files without such a header are covered by the terms outlined in the
> LICENSE file, as an example look at some of the files below vidix/ that
> come from xfree86.
> 
> So a statement about files without license headers would have to list
> exactly which license applies to which file. Move some files around and
> this quickly becomes a burden to maintain and you can be sure that
> updates to such a file will be forgotten.
> 
> 2) Some people (our developers even) interpret the lack of a license header
> as meaning GPL v2 instead of any version, as clearly stated in the text
> of the GPL.  So there obviously is room for misinterpretation.  Unified
> license headers avoid this ambiguity.
> 
> 3) Last and absolutely not least, code from MPlayer gets copied around a
> lot.  Once it has moved between two or three code bases, attributions
> can easily get lost.  It will no longer be clear where a file comes from
> and which license it is under.  It might become a part of code that is
> not compatible with the GPL.  This would violate the intentions of the
> authors.
> 
> 
> If we were to start afresh and could say that all files in this project
> are under license XYZ, that would be great.  Unfortunately we do not
> have that luxury.
> 
> I can understand that license headers for all files are burdensome, but
> there simply is no acceptable alternative.  It is the smallest evil.

a simple
// This file can be used under the GPL v2+
at the top of each file should solve the problems you point at

[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Awnsering whenever a program halts or runs forever is
On a turing machine, in general impossible (turings halting problem).
On any real computer, always possible as a real computer has a finite number
of states N, and will either halt in less than N cycles or never halt.
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