[MPlayer-dev-eng] MPlayer license versioning issue

[Diego Biurrun]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 05:00:16PM +0400, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> 
> May I use parts of mplayer code under GPL v3 version or it is 
> forbidden?
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but as I understood, GPL v2 and v3 are strictly 
> speaking incompatible. The only exeption is when author mentioned 
> "GPL v2 or any later" or doesn't specify GPL license version at 
> all. I'm somewhat misundenstand this sentence in the Copyright 
> file: "You are free to use it under the terms of the GNU General 
> Public License, as described in the LICENSE file." Does this mean 
> strictly GPL v2 (LICENSE file), or imply possibility to use any 
> version of GPL and v2 in particular, because GPL version is not 
> specified in the Copyright file?

Unless there is an "or any later version" clause it means just GPLv2.
The problem with MPlayer is that some files are licensed under just
GPLv2 while others have no or unclear license statements.

In summary for all of the sources your best answer is no.

> To be more exact, I'm interesting in using parts of configure 
> script. My project is not multimedia related, but this script 
> contains a lot of usefull routines and it is not autoconf-based 
> crap, so it will be handy.

Better have a look at FFmpeg's configure, it is considerably more
elegant.

Any parts of both configures I have written you are free to reuse
under GPLv3.

Diego