[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] unrarlib on AMD64

[Rich Felker]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 07:33:54PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Sunday 17 April 2005 17:20, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 11:09:06AM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > > On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 04:37:32PM +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski 
> wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, 17 April 2005 at 11:37, Jindrich Makovicka wrote:
> > > > > What about adding an (optional) support for rar executable, instead
> > > > > of unrarlib? Recent rars cannot be read by unrarlib anyway.
> > > >
> > > > Because we strive not to require proprietary libs/tools. Though unrar
> > > > source is available, the license is not GPL compatible. No rar3 support
> > > > is planned in unrarlib, so we just have to live with it or write rar3
> > > > decompression routines ourselves.
> > >
> > > i propose the latter, and adding rar3 compression routines while we're
> > > at it. :)
> >
> > Unfortunately (un)rar 3 has an obnoxious license that prohibits
> > reimplementation (under a different license):
> >
> >    2. The unRAR sources may be used in any software to handle RAR
> >       archives without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used
> >       to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary.
> >       Distribution of modified unRAR sources in separate form or as a
> >       part of other software is permitted, provided that it is clearly
> >       stated in the documentation and source comments that the code may
> >       not be used to develop a RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver.
> 
> IMHO/IANAL this is irrelevant, we did not agree to that license (no signature 
> on paper not even a 'i agree' button), so we cannot be bound by it
> except maybe thouse who did redistribute that code, but thouse who just 
> downloaded it should be IMHO/IANAL able to legally reimplement it

exactly. bullshit like that in a 'license' is exactly that, bullshit.
it makes the unrar3 source gpl-incompatible, but has no effect on
people wanting to reverse engineer rar compression.

rich