"Licensed" codecs

[Alan Cox]

> I'll give you this one, only if you can tell me what would prevent 
> something like mPlayer being released GPL, and the codec plugin from being 
> released as a seperate binary only package?  The copy of xmms I have right 
> now comes as two seperate RPMs.  The xmms RPM package that contains the 
> player and the xmms-mp3 mplugin RPM which I had to go and d/l elsewhere.

For GPL software the GPL prevents it. For BSD type licenses you can probably
do that just fine providing you have the relevant licenses