[MPlayer-G2-dev] dual licensing try 2

[rsnel at cube.dyndns.org]

Hello,

I am just a minor contributor to g1 (and in the future possibly to g2),
but I would like to voice my opinion on this matter. (short version: I
am from the RMS camp)

> A'rpi said:
> Also, they mostly want to modify stream/demux code only, not the
> vp/ap stuff. So they can do their propietrary changes (ie. encrypted
> streaming, authentication, pay-per-view, secret fileformat etc) to it
> [...] 
Is there a really good reason for you to help companies doing those
nefarious things? I consider limiting the end user by crippling software
(and/or denying the user the four basic rights that are granted by the
GPL (in short: unlimited usage, distribution, modification and
redistribution of a program and all derivatives)) morally wrong (and
therefore, I don't want any involvement in it).

Possible outcome (hypothetical):

Mplayer-g2 will be forked, the fork will be singly licensed. The fork
can benefit from updates of the original version. The other way around
is very difficult, since most of the contributions to the fork will be
GPL-only. The two will go out of sync while the mplayer-g2 maintainers
are re-implementing wanted code that was added to the fork (which will
be a giant waste of resources and a legal minefield).

The question is which will draw the best/most developers. My guess is
that it will be the forked version.

So the companies using the original mplayer-g2 can't legally benefit
from the continuing maintenance of the fork of mplayer-g2 (which will in
the near future probably contain support for those 'secret file formats'
and 'pay-per-view', by the way), so they will have to do all the
maintenance themselves and be tempted to use the forked version and
hope no-one will notice. 

Which is almost the same problem we are having now... 

As an answer to Atilla's poll:

I vote for keeping MPlayer-g2 GPL'd. (specifically not the Lesser GPL,
because LGPL'ing MPlayer-g2 will be a motivation for softwaremakers to
keep making proprietary software which serves no-one but said
softwaremakers (and I don't find that a worthy goal, obviously)).

Greetings,

Rik.

-- 
Nothing is ever a total loss; it can always serve as a bad example.