[MPlayer-dev-eng] NUT format

[Diego Biurrun]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 09:48:24AM +0200, Gábor Lénárt wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 06:19:01PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > > I think if NUT is solely promoted and supported by mplayer the NUT
> > > format will not become ubiquitous.  However, an independent
> > > organisation (website etc), giving away reference implementations of NUT
> > > under BSD
> > > licences would foster wider support IMO.
> > 
> > It's planned to release a reference implementation under an X11 or
> > similar license (BSD without advertising clause).
> > 
> > It's also planned to write demuxers for other players like xine, vlc,
> > winamp, maybe more
> 
> <IMHO>
> Sorry, but I don't understand the problem here. The documentation itself
> which describes the format is a DOCUMENTATION and not 'SOFTWARE'.
> So at least some documentation related license can be considered but
> software licenses are not perfect for this purpose.
> 
> The reference or any other implementation is another thing which can be
> even a closed source software, because if documentation which describes
> NUT is free someone can implement its own demuxer into its own close
> source player as well.
> 
> It's like you can copyright a browser which can display HTML, but the
> description of the structure of HTML itself is not copyrighted by you
> at all. Sure, the HTML example is interesting, since it has got problems
> which many different 'dialects' and vendor specific 'extensions' so maybe
> it's not too bad idea to use some PROTECTION  against modifications in
> NUT specification without release the information (but not the code/source
> itself) by the modifier firm/person.
> 
> So I don't see the problem here.
> </IMHO>

If you want the widest possible support for a format, providing a reference
implementation under an X11/MIT license is the best way to get it used.  Of
course it is possible to implement a demuxer from a specification, but the
chances of this happening for a fringe format such as NUT are slim to none.
So if there is a demuxer that can be reused freely with little or no changes
chances for adoption will increase.

Does that make things more clear?

Diego