[MPlayer-DOCS] manpage and HTML docs - FFmpeg MPEG-4 vs. DivX

[Jakub Misak]

On Wednesday 17 of November 2004 10:30, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> Since no patch seems to be forthcoming I fixed this myself.  Have a
> look at the documentation again, if you find any occurrences where
> this should still be changed, please say so.

Thank you very much indeed, I really appreciate it. I also apologize for 
not doing it myself like Dominik Mierzejewski suggested - I'm a total 
outsider here, not part of the team and don't even know how to do it 
properly.

The main problem was the controversial line in the manpage, where 
libavcodec MPEG-4 (-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4) was said to be "DivX 4/5". 
Now this was changed to "MPEG4 (DivX 4/5)".

I'm sorry to still bother you with this, but unfortunately this doesn't 
solve anything. The problem with that line in the manpage was that it 
made people think that FFmpeg was DivX. This problem is still there - 
people will really still think libavcodec is DivX, no matter how 
well-meant that line is. Really, I have years of painful experience 
with this. I know that the intention behind terms like "MPEG-4 (DivX)" 
instead of "MPEG-4" is to make it more accessibe to masses, but alas, 
it only causes massive confusion, global ignorance and big damage.

The only solution is to remove the "DivX" from this line (at least from 
this line in the manpage, that's all I ask for) completely. "DivX" is a 
trademark of DivXNetworks. It's a name of their commercial 
product/technology. It is not a generic term that can be applied to 
anything else than DivXNetworks' product. They also say that very 
clearly on their website where they explicitly mention this and that 
terms like "MPEG-4 (DivX)" are unacceptable. But of course - when it's 
really DivX (the codec made by DivXNetworks), it is perfectly OK to 
call it DivX, that's where it belongs. So I don't ask for wiping out 
all "DivX" occurences from the MPlayer docs, because MPlayer supports 
DivX, too. But you shouldn't use "DivX" anywhere else, where it's not 
DivX. It's also in the interest of the open-source community to prefer 
open-source product - FFmpeg/libavcodec is so closely related to 
MPlayer, and yet you harm it so much by making people think it's a 
different, commercial product. I think you should be more 
self-confident, promote "your" fine codec and not hide it behind false 
names. FFmpeg deserves it. ;-)

Kind regards,
Jakub Misak