[MPlayer-users] Re: License

[Gábor Lénárt]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 12:40:36PM +0200, Tom Mraz wrote:
> Yes, Mplayer actually violates the GPL. Because you can't distribute
> anything which is derivative of some GPLed work with different license than
> GPL. The license of the included things would have to be at least LGPL and
> then you would have to include these included things by dynamic linking at
> runtime (no static linking). Other way you aren't allowed to distribute the
> program.
> So GPLed program isn't possible to link with proprietary codecs DLLs.

No, imho you're wrong! Think about Linux kernel and binary only kernel modules.
It was said that since those modules can be built without the whole kernel
and uses kernel as an API only, it's legal to distribute non-GPL kernel
modules. MPlayer DOES NOT contain DLL's. You *CAN* download them if you wish.
But it CAN work without it. Also MPlayer does not even LINK afainst DLLs!!
MPlayer uses them to load into memory them and other ugly tricks to work
together with them. If you are right, ANY non-GPL program links against libc
would be illegal ... [OK, libc is LGPL, but mplayer does not even LINKS with
DLLs!!!] So MPlayer CAN BE GPL if other problems are solved.

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