[MPlayer-users] Re: License

[Cyan Ogilvie]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 09:50:41AM -0400, Robinson, Chad wrote:
> > This was a concern I had before, but with the new conditions specified
> > in the docs I think this is covered. Mplayer's own code (written from
> > scratch by Arpi & co) is not released under the GPL since they want the
> > possibility to restrict redistribution of binaries. The code which is
> > borrowed from other projects are specified as still carrying the license
> > it had before.
> 
> I wasn't aware of this. It invalidates some of what I said earlier. However,
> it raises another concern. MPlayer isn't really protected by any license,
> then. There isn't a Copyright notice to be found. That means ANYBODY could
> steal it and do whatever they wanted with it without reference, credit, or
> remuneration to the original authors. Shame...

IANAL, but without a license it means that you have _no_ rights to it,
it's copyrighted by the author.  It has to be explicitly licensed as
public domain to in the situation you describe.  As far as I
understand copyright issues, mplayers license would look like:

-------
Copyright Arpi and co 2001.  Anyone obtaining the source code to the 
software has the right to redistribute it, providing this copyright
notice is kept intact, to compile binary code from it for their own
use, but may not distribute these binaries.  The user may modify the
source code and redistribute these changes, as long as the changes
carry this copyright (derivative work), and give credit to the
original authors.  The act of linking a library against the mplayer
source code does constitute a derivative work.
This software carries absolutely no warrenty or implied warrenty and
the authors are not liable for any damages resulting from it's use in
any way.
-------

This would have to be translated into legalese to plug holes, etc, but
maybe it could form a base for discussion.  The GPL with ammendments
thing is dodgy.

As a side note, most commonly used open source licenses explicitly
grant the right to fork the code.  Anyone find this odd that it's 
against the unwritten law of the hackers that forks are very bad and
should be avoided at all costs?

Call for geek lawyers to tighten up this license as a base for
discussion...

Cyan