[MPlayer-users] Re: License

[Jesus Climent]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 07:54:24PM +0200, Arpi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > Under this license it would not be legal for anybody to distribute or
> > use mplayer, as it links with GPL libraries. Note sections 2b, 4, 5
> > and 7 of the GPL. Mplayer must be licensed either entirely under the
> > GPL, or not at all.
> > 
> > Currently, with the opendivx stuff still in place, this applies. This
> > makes mplayer personal use only - nobody can redistribute it.
> 
> Hmm. Okay. Then we will soon close all this stuff, and develop only for our
> personal use. Is us the best solution for everyone?

Arpi. I really take your words very seriously... but not this time.

I hope you are not changing your mind...

GPL is your friend. Let me explain myself.

Thanks to GPL (or other licenses, but the matter is GPL here) you have
been able (and others) to borrow code from other projects and the GPL
ensures that the code will always be available for other developers to
borrow it and modify/use it to produce better software.

Mplayer is a _GREAT_ example, since no other video player was able to
actually play anything.

But the rules of the game are quite clear.

If you borrow some other code and publish (distribute) the code, it 
_has_ to be released under GPL. But do not take it as an offense. Just
take it as a gift: some other will use your "children" and improve it!

I think it would be a mistake to stop the developement of such a great
piece of code. And it would be not legal to release it under any other
thing than GPL (if I have undestood correctly, since it has borrowed
some GPL code from other projects and it includes that code).

As someone mentioned before, you can break the rule as long as the 
copyright holder of the code you borrowed does not complain about it.

But if it is GPL, the license cannot add any enforcement nor any 
restriction of the GPL license itself.

> Then you don't have to worry about source vs. binaries, compilation bugs
> etc, and we have much more time for development and watching movies with it.

Hey... About the bug reports...

Why don't you just ignore those messages? After reading the list and
being active tester of the code, I believe there is a "bunch" of people
following the project who could actually answer those stupid mails while
you can concentrate in the important mails and the deep code issues.
 
> I made it a year ago, just to be able to watch MI2 VCD under linux.
> The only player playing it was the commercial mtv, but it has bad a-v sync
> and its fullscreen sucks. SO I started this project for my personal use.
> Later my friends ask me to distribute becaus ethey saw it working here.
> So we decided to make it opensource, and put out to the net. It was the
> biggest fault I've ever did.

HEI! Sounds like Linux... It started just for fun, and because minix was
not a solution available!

> I see - you say power on my computer even breaks some licenses.
> So it has no sense fighting against licenses. They always win.
> And you are very happy with them. This will bring opensource community to
> death. But it doesn't matter.

Sorry here... exactly OpenSource projects benefit from licenses like GPL
as they enforce the code to be re-released as GPL again and again.

That allows code to be modified and performance improved. Bugs solved.
Specific solutions defined and solved... 

> Just check how many opensource projects suffers with licensing problems, and
> has to use much worse implementations as available just because of the
> licenses. It's simply shit. And only make lawyers happy.

Yep. But check how many HP-UX software is actually opensource, released
under the GPL license (as well as in Solaris, FreeBSD,...) thus making
the Unix world one of the most exciting experiences... If you don't like
one implementation, just create one yourself, taking the code from here
and there... and then showing the world what you have done.

Finally, I just want to express my wish of Mplayer to be released fully
under GPL (o similar license) so it can be always used in Debian, as it
is my Linux Distro. I love both.

And please, Arpi... continue being so great in coding and RTFMing people.

Jesse.

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