[MPlayer-dev-eng] about the suse removal (Fwd: Re: MPlayer in SuSE)

[Arpi]

the possible reason for removal of mplayer from suse:

this mail was exchanged by me and some suse legal ppl, they said its
still not possible to enable some key features, due to legal problems.
then i asked them, that if mpeg4, ac3, asf etc cannot be enabled, then
remove crippled mplayer from distro. an useless mplayer gui without
codecs and demuxers isn't a good thing.

--------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Stanislav Brabec <sbrabec at suse.cz>
To: gabucino at mplayerhq.hu
Subject: Re: MPlayer in SuSE

V St, 06. 08. 2003 v 18:26, gabucino at mplayerhq.hu napsal:
> Stanislav Brabec wrote:
> > Previous maintainer probably decided to disable it whole due too many
> > patented codecs. I can re-enable it and disable only specific codecs.
> I don't think disabling GSM is too much of a loss, but be sure to enable
> MPEG4. And, as A'rpi said, enable ASF format too.
> 

Sorry, we cannot:

MPEG4 is patented, and jw sent you actual prices for royalties: Decoders
and encoders are each subject to a total annual cap of $100,000 per
legal entity. It's very expensive.

ASF is patented, too: US pat. 6,041,345 "Active stream format for
holding multiple media streams." (Microsoft, March 21, 2000)
Royalties can be probably cheaper, web newspapers say: player $0.10,
coder $0.20, both $0.25. No further fee.

AC3: Status is uncertain, probably intellectual property of Dolby
Laboratories, Inc.

-- 
Best Regards / S pozdravem,

Stanislav Brabec
pracovník vývoje softwaru / software developer
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