[MPlayer-G2-dev] the awakening, license changes and so on...

[Diego Biurrun]

Arpi writes:
> 
> > > First of all, do a quick search for libraries on freshmeat, and re-count
> > > licenses. I have a bet that lgpl will win it.
> > 
> > I'm much too lazy to do that, but here is a quick unscientific count
> > on my (Debian unstable) system:
> > 
> > silver:/usr/share/doc$ for i in lib*; do (find $i -name copyright -exec
> > grep /usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL {} \;) >> /tmp/lgpl; done
> > silver:/usr/share/doc$ wc -l /tmp/lgpl
> > 106 /tmp/lgpl
> > silver:/usr/share/doc$ for i in lib*; do (find $i -name copyright -exec
> > grep /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL {} \;) >> /tmp/gpl; done
> > silver:/usr/share/doc$ wc -l /tmp/gpl
> > 117 /tmp/gpl
> > silver:/usr/share/doc$ ls /usr/share/common-licenses/
> > Artistic  BSD  GPL  GPL-2  LGPL  LGPL-2  LGPL-2.1
> > 
> > So it's 117 GPL vs 106 LGPL libraries.
> 
> no much difference. anyway it depends on how many apps you have
> installed and how well they share the common libraries.
> 
> why don't you count gpl vs lgpl of lib* packages only?

Look closer, that's exactly what I did.

> > IMO you are trading in the hope of getting new developers for the risk
> > of loosing a few of the old ones.  Not a good deal.
> 
> there is no one to loose.
> except for Michael, but he accepted lgpl, with condition me coming back.
> (also he accepted lgpl for libavcodec, which was much worse case)

Any pointers to the lavc license discussion?  I'd be interested in
reading it.

> ah, and as the core is in our hands, we can do anything we want,
> including copy drm'ed content downloaded by closedsrc plugins :)

Yes, this is a loophole that I've already described.  It's part of why
I believe proprietary companies will only use top to bottom
proprietary solutions.  Let's not talk too loud, though, they may fall
into our clever trap ;-)

> > > > The city of Münster wants to become the most wired city in the world
> > > > (they have fiber all over already) and offer high performance WLAN and
> > > > content streaming for its citizens.  They want to build all the
> > > > infrastructure on free software and release everything they create as
> > > > GPL.  They were looking at MPlayer for the client part of the
> > > > streaming solution.
> > > 
> > > and why would they sponsor us?
> > 
> > As I said, they were looking at MPlayer for the client part of the
> > streaming solution and would sponsor modifications.
> 
> what modifications they need? a nice gui?

Cross-platform support with GUI on all platforms, improved streaming,
stuff like that.

> > > > Then there was another company that wants to sponsor G2 development as
> > > > a backend for a VJ (video jockey) application.  I forgot their name
> > > > and apparently lost their damn business card, but Alex should have it.
> > > 
> > > and their VJ app would be also GPL ? i really doubt it.
> > 
> > Yes, it would be GPL.
> 
> then they cant sell it, so they cant get money from it, so they
> cant sponsor development unless they are also sponsored by
> gov or something.

They have a client that wants a VJ application.  They have been hired
to develop and service it, it's as easy as that.

> > As should be obvious by now, I'd much prefer GPL.
> 
> i see.
> but as i already said, i'm personally not interested in gpl g2 development.
> if someone needs a gpl player, use g1. if you need a clean library framework
> then you'll also need some acceptable license too.

xine-lib is GPL, btw, like you just asked on IRC.

Diego