[MPlayer-dev-eng] Utilize libunrar.so/unrar.dll?

[Ivan Kalvachev]

2005/10/21, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de>:
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 10:41:51PM +0300, ?smail Dönmez wrote:
> > On Friday 21 October 2005 22:36, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> > >
> > > > Except you are not allowed to read the code if you will develop an
> > > > unrar-like program :-). Anyway as you said its not crucial but well would
> > > > be nice imho.
> > >
> > > Doesn't the license just say you may not use it to develop a compatible
> > > archiver? Just a decompressor wouldn't qualify as that I'd say...
> >
> > Hmm yeah relevant license part says :
> >
> >    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.
> >
> > So it can surely be reimplemented as L/GPL.
>
> How you can arrive at this conclusion from the above words is a mystery
> to me ...

compressor!=decompressor

They just forbid creating new rar compressor (aka encoder), while
allow free decompressors (as long as you need their compressor to make
files). It is so simple.

It is just that nobody bothers to create their own decompressor
because the original unrar license is so permissive.