RE: gnome-multimedia digest, Vol 1 #99 - 1 msg

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 23:47, L. Clayton Parker wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: gnome-multimedia-admin gnome org
> > [mailto:gnome-multimedia-admin gnome org]On Behalf Of
> > Christian Fredrik
> > Kalager Schaller
> > Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 12:45 PM
> > To: Aaron Buckner
> > Cc: gnome-multimedia gnome org
> > Subject: Re: gnome-multimedia digest, Vol 1 #99 - 1 msg
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 18:25, Aaron Buckner wrote:
> >
> > The tragic fact is that applications like Xine, Mplayer or Totem for
> > that matter, and libraries like mad and ac3dec are violating their own
> > license making it impossible for distributors that care about
> > respecting
> > the license of the software they ship to ship them.
> 
> I would have to agree with Aaron. RedHat has purposely shipped mplayer and
> XMMS as  "lobotomized" versions with no MPEG or MP3 support rather than
> violate licensing restrictions. It is left to the user to download and
> install the full version - and it must be compiled for your particular
> system which turns out to be a non-trivial task on some systems (like mine).

Red Hat never shipped mplayer.

> For instance, I was able to ugrade XMMS and get it to play MP3s, but I
> cannot get mplayer to play _anything_.

PEBCAK...

> What is actually needed are "standard formats" that are GPL licensed, rather
> than the code to interpret them. It would be great if a certain few vendors
> would simply put their standard formats in the Public Domain, without giving
> up the rights to any of the code to read or write them. If we can write a
> better program (that doesn't infringe their patent to their code) - great.
> Maybe we can then sell the program back or to some other comapny or put it
> in the Public Domain ourseleves - our choice.

You can't license a format under the GPL, that's not what it's for. We
need patent-free formats, and work is under way for those.

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>