[MPlayer-G2-dev] dual licensing try 2

[D Richard Felker III]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 06:05:32PM +0100, florian dietrich wrote:
>  --- D Richard Felker III <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
> 
> > Dynamically loading GPL code does not get around the GPL. If your
> > proprietary program is using the GPL code, it must be fully GPL or
> > (a technicality here) you must refrain from distributing the GPL'd
> > code AT ALL (since you have forfeited your rights under the GPL by
> > not releasing your program under the GPL).
> 
> Hmm, so would a proprietary program be allowed to use mplayer G2 as
> its "back-end"? If it is not, then that would clearly be more
> restrictive than using mplayer G1, because it's fine to use mplayer
> G1 in slave mode using a proprietary program (the way I understand
> things).
> I'm saying this without prejudice whether I think it's "right" or
> "wrong" allowing a proprietary program to do that or not - though I
> think that if there's people stupid enough paying for a simple
> frontend, why not let them?

This is perfectly fine. Note that it's not possible to do nasty DRM
stuff with a method like this. The unencrypted data gets passed
directly into MPlayer, which the user is able to modify, so they can
make it dump the unencrypted video.

Even if they modify MPlayer so it accepts encrypted data, they have to
release the code to decrypt (which they are linking into MPlayer), so
they still lose.

> Anyway, I think we should get back to the question that A'rpi asked
> in the beginning: What could be done to make mplayer G2 *THE* video
> architecture for linux (or *ix in general)? And make it that not ony
> for the users but for the companies too?

Why on earth would we want it to be used that way???? This does not
benefit us.

> Let's try to evaluate what companies might want from such an
> architecture then.

No, let's not. It's not our job to satisfy commercial software
vendors, and I want no part in doing so.

> First, there's the (commercial) codec writers and filter writers.
> The license of the mplayer core is probably not their concern, since
> they don't need to use or change it (instead mplayer will use them,
> right?).

MPlayer will use them extralegally without their permission. :)

> Of course it helps them if writing codec/filter interfaces
> for mplayer is easy and doesn't change every once in a while (since
> that means work (=money) for them). For the same reason, they might
> want to be sure that it really is THE video architecture, because
> otherwise they have to write several of those interfaces for
> different back-ends.

This is nonsense. They will never (and should never!) write MPlayer
codec modules. They should just make a decent shared lib, which
someone else wraps for MPlayer.

Or rather, what they SHOULD do is LGPL their codec and submit it to
libavcodec, but they're too lame to do that. In any case someone will
reverse engineer it and do that for them.

> If someone wants to use codecs and filters written for mplayer G2,

Then their entire application needs to be GPL. Dynamic loading GPL
modules does NOT exempt you from having to follow the conditions of
the GPL if you intend to distribute or prepare derivative works of the
GPL'd program.

Rich