Include MPlayer in beta?

Bryan W. Headley bwheadley at earthlink.net
Wed Sep 17 20:05:27 UTC 2003


William Hooper wrote:
> Bryan W. Headley said:
> 
>>William Hooper wrote:
>>
>>
>>>b) MPlayer is saying it is GPL.  If he decides to try to use patents to
>>>prevent distribution it is no longer GPL (see mp3 discussions).
>>
>>Are you saying that patenting something in a product retroactively
>>revokes the GPL license for all prior releases?
> 
> 
> The *prevent distribution* part is the issue.  I read his comments to mean
> that whatever software was to be patented wasn't in there yet.  The mp3
> problem comes about because the patent holder wants a license for
> commercial use, thereby limiting the distribution.

More than that, there's licensing fees they'd like to collect.

> Granted the mp3 issue (patent holder is not the author) and this issue are
> different, but the basic principal is the same.

Yes and no. Given the mplayer author's desire for a full player, does he 
consider removing mp3 en/decoding "crippling" the package? What I don't 
know is whether mp3lame ffmpeg opendivx avoids the patent issue...

-- 
____               .:.                 ____
Bryan W. Headley - bwheadley at earthlink.net





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