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

[Diego Biurrun]

Jakub Misak writes:
> 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.

It's not such a big deal, just read DOCS/tech/patches.txt, we'll
assist you with any further problems you might have.

> 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.

What I fear is that people might look for a possibility to encode
"DivX" and then turn away from FFmpeg because they fail to see such a
thing.

> 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.

Could you provide an URL with that statement?

> 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. ;-)

I totally agree that FFmpeg deserves all the credit and praise it can
get, definitely much more than it currently receives.

Diego