[MPlayer-dev-eng] mplayer non-free software?

[Gábor Lénárt]

On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 02:47:52PM +0200, Piotr Roszatycki wrote:
> The MPlayer is non-free software already. Is any chance to redistribute
> MPlayer in binary form?

As far as I know MPlayer is "almost" GNU/GPL but:

1. included OpenDivX codec source is not
2. binary distribution is banned. Imho Arpi feels (and he's probably right!)
   that users will send bugreports on mplayer binaries which were not compiled
   by users but got with downloading binaries/distribution packages.
   this is bad, because currently mplayer highly depends on compile time
   options and hw/sw environment so this way of distributing will cause
   problems. Also, binary form may not contain all of features, may have got
   bugs (eg because of using some braindead compiler :), so user would think
   mplayer is shit.

The solution would be:

1. AFAIK, OpenDivX would be eliminated if some GNU/GPL postprocess code is
   implemented. Of course MPlayer CAN'T be GNU/GPL till this move, since GNU/GPL
   and OpenDivX licence are not compatible with eachother (imho).
2. MPlayer should be more modular to avoid this problem.

As you can see many tasks should be done mplayer to become true GPL sw.

However this letter is strictly "IMHO" and "AFAIK" :)

- Gabor

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