MPlayer Licence Trouble With A Twist 476
protonman writes "A hefty flame war has broken loose on the debian-devel mailinglist about (amongst other things) the legality of mplayer. The interesting part in this conflict is that unlike in previous alledged GPL violations, the culprit is not the unwillingness to provide the source, but the prohibition of the distribution of binaries, thereby violating section 6 of the GPL: 'You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.' Read also the blurb on the MPlayer homepage."
The simple fact.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people don't care about licensing. Copying free software, copying closed software, it's all the same.
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, it's difficult to make good MPlayer binaries, and distros tend to leave out the part of MPlayer thay are the most useful (the Sorensen, ffmpeg, windows-DLL based parts), as a result MPlayer authors get a lot of complaints.
The licensing problems aren't really licensing problems. Most of the libraries that are in the gray area are written by people who work closely with the MPlayer team anyway, and/or are designed for other projects and need heavy modifications to be used in MPlayer (one of the conflicts is just based on the absence of a ChangeLog file!!! You gotta be kidding). There's no risk of lawsuit here, it's just some things have not been done 100% by the book. Somehow that's ok for projects like xine (which includes libavcodec), but MPlayer suffers from some bad rep here.
The fact remains: MPlayer is one of the most IMPRESSIVE piece of open-source software engineering i've ever seen, and it's a shame distros a so conservative about it.
DZM
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's difficult to make good MPlayer binaries because MPlayer is badly written. Don't you get that? If the MPlayer authors actually cared about well-written software, it would use carefully crafted, modular APIs between all the component parts. I could add Quicktime codecs to MPlayer just by copying a hypothetical mp_qtime.so into lib/mplayer/codecs. Instead, it's a sprawling mess with files all over the place and a special codecs.conf acting as a central registry. Why can't each plugin tell Mplayer what capabilities it has, like Xine or XMMS does?
MPlayer is famous simply mostly because it got Win32 codecs to work outside Windows. Kudos to them for doing so, but distributing other people's binary codecs is usually illegal. Apple don't permit you to hack into the Sorensen codecs and get them to work outside Quicktime Player.
How would the like MPlayer authors like mplayer to be embedded as a binary in some media player, without source? Oh yeah, they whined like kiddies when that happened.
I happen to write decompressors for various archive formats. Do I just take DOS binaries for those formats and hack into them to run them in Linux, then say "x86 only guys!"? No, I fully reverse-engineer the originals and write new depackers from scratch. The MPlayer team should do the same, and stop relying on other people's binaries for their glory.
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Reverse-engineering is the perfect solution, but in practice it can only be done for simple things. Reverse-engineering WMV or Sorensen v3: you can't be serious, this is almost impossible unless you're either a authistic genius or somebody with inside information about how the codecs work. In the real world, those codecs will most likely NEVER be reverse engineered. And i don't think begging Microsoft and Apple/Sorensen for Linux versions will work either (laugh!). So what do you do ?
MPlayer is the only project that provides a solution. I couldn't care less how they do it.
DZM
Rubbish (Score:5, Informative)
But it has been done -- in Xine.
Reverse-engineering is the perfect solution, but in practice it can only be done for simple things.
You clearly don't know how difficult (read: easy) it is to do reverse engineering. It only takes a skilled reverse-engineer (of which there are thousands in this world, most of them are ex-crackers), time and interest.
I've reverse engineered decompression algorithms far more difficult than SVQ3's decoder. Although I haven't seen it, there are rumours that SVQ3 has been reverse-engineered and posted anonymously to Usenet. They say it's just H.263 with some scrambling tables, so Sorensen can claim copyright infringement (of those tables) if anyone writes a decoder. All WMV and WMA codecs have been reverse-engineered. There is nothing mystical or special about a multimedia codec, it's just an algorithm like anything else.
One last example, the even more difficult Microsoft Media Player DRM has been flawlessly reverse-engineered (not by me), despite being actively encrypted and made difficult to run through.
The MPlayer authors are rarely the guys behind reimplementing codecs -- that's what the authors of ffmpeg (libavcodec) do. MPlayer just takes the glory by putting it all together.
Talk is cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk is cheap. Show us the code.
The devil is in the details. In other words, it is easy to say something is easy until you have done it.
If you have reversed-engineered a significant audio or video codec, I will retract my position and be suitably impressed.
And, yes, I do see you code at http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/packers.php3 [uklinux.net], but there isn't an audio nor video codec to be seen. It all looks like LZW variants; lossy compression (DCTs, wavelets, and what not) is a completely different kettle of fish.
- Sam
Re:Rubbish (Score:5, Insightful)
But Xine doesn't have 20% of MPlayer's features. You can't compare Xine and MPlayer in terms of code base. Still, i'm totally willing to agree that Xine has much cleaner code (i don't really know), but that doesn't prove much. Xine is certainly not more stable than MPlayer.
I stand corrected for the reverse-engineering aspect, though you make it sound strangely easy. Yet I don't see any open-source decoders based on those rev-eng efforts out there, even hosted in copyright-liberal countries. But anyway, f, however, reproducing the scrambling tables is illegal, then there's no perfect solution to this problem. So don't blame MPlayer's people for going to the easier DLL solution then!! All i want is a linux player that plays Sorensen v2 and 3 (and no, Crossover doesn't qualify).
The MPlayer authors are rarely the guys behind reimplementing codecs -- that's what the authors of ffmpeg (libavcodec) do. MPlayer just takes the glory by putting it all together.
You make it sound like the MPlayer authors are just a bunch of code thieves, which is completely untrue. They wrote a lot of the codecs and work closely with a lot of the projects they borrow code from. Everybody knows ffmpeg is not MPlayer, nor is it Xine (which also uses it).
DZM
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't use Mplayer, do you? To add a codec, simply copy it to the codec directory. End of story. BTW, Mplayer supports all Quicktime codecs.
Apple don't permit you to hack into the Sorensen codecs and get them to work outside Quicktime Player.
Actually, so far, they have. The legal arguments are several.
1) The binary is the same as Windows, and performs the same functions, and is freely downloadable from the provider. Apple. Provided the user does the download, no big deal.
2) The code itself uses a plug-in architecture for Windows and Quicktime dlls, so that copyright issues on different sides of the plug-in interface are separated.
So, Mplayer is GPL, but can still use Windows dlls, when they are available.
The MPlayer team should do the same, and stop relying on other people's binaries for their glory.
They DID reverse engineer SVQ1. And, others are coming, but until they are available, the movies may still be played using the Windows binary codecs, available via plug-in.
Also, the source only re-distribution requirement is now gone, and the binary optimizes for hardware on the fly.
Mplayer is a very impressive piece of software engineering.
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Who needs Apple's permissions? Where I live it is explicitly permitted by law, and the law even says that right cannot be given up by agreement.
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:5, Interesting)
He didn't say that the MPlayer authors don't care about licensing. He didn't say Debian doesn't care about licensing (in fact, Debian seems to insist on strict adherence to the GPL more than just about any company out there). He didn't say that most *companies* don't care about licensing issues.
He said that most PEOPLE don't care about licenses. And, I believe that holds true.
How many MP3s do you have for which you have no corresponding CD in your posession? How about ROMS for video games? Windows installations (even if you own one, do you run it on more than one computers)? How about 30-day shareware with no hard timeout, which "expired" about two years ago?
People care abour convenience and functionality. If they didn't, how many people would *BUY* Debian or RedHat CDs? I can download all of that from the net, totally legally. I can download all of the documentation (or at least comparable) as well. Why would I pay for a CD? Because $20 for a 4-8 CD set saves me several days time downloading and burning the same material. OTOH, saving $80-$160 by borrowing a friend's Windows install CD and spending 20 minutes looking on-line for a valid CD key seems very much worth it. Same for MS Office.
People pay for convenience, not because they give a damn about whether or not they legally *need* to pay. I think most people *prefer* to stay legal, given the choice with no extra cost (in time *or* money), but they won't go very far out of their way to make sure they stay legal.
Note that I don't mean this to *encourage* piracy - Just describing how I see this issue WRT other peoples' buying/stealing habits.
Now, to address the parent thread, I have an interesting question...
If the MPlayer license complies with the GPL in all regards *except* allowing binary distribution, that means the authors cannot stop me from modifying and re-releasing it under GPL-or-better terms. So why hasn't Debian done exactly that? "Nope, not MPlayer, we changed int main(int argc, char **argv) to int main(int argc, char *argv[]), much more aesthetically pleasing, and released it as DPlayer under pure GPL terms"?. Seems that the GPL allows that...
Re:The simple fact.. (Score:4, Informative)
You're right but the issue is no longer the binary distribution (that was fixed long ago). You can distribute MPlayer binaries if you want, except you'll get flamed by MPlayer's authors if you don't package it properly
- MPlayer uses ffmpeg (libavcodec) which some people say has patent issues wrt MPEG4. Xine uses the same library, as it's the only Linux-native DivX decoder (and therefore fastest)
- Mplayer uses modified code from libmpeg2, but didn't include a ChangeLog. No big deal as they work closely with the libmpeg2 project and it'll be resolved in a future version of libmpeg2
That's about it.
DZM
Obligatory VLC Reference (Score:3, Offtopic)
It's a way to stream video content from a server and view it on a client, but as a nice side-effect, it's a DVDCSS-enabled DVD player, and a pretty good one at that. It's not skinnable, it uses your built-in OS widgets, so it's not as ugly as all the other media players. It looks like it belongs on your desktop with all your other apps.
Mplayer seems to have much better DivX/MJPEG/blah/blah support than VLC, however, so you can't just go whacking mplayer from your HDD. Sorry.
Re:Obligatory VLC Reference (Score:2, Informative)
mplayer has actually an gui, and it is pretty themable/skinnable (I think much in the way gqmpeg or kjöfol is)
Like many people, I despise the GUI that they've come out with. Tiny buttons, can't read worth a shit, get in the way, really. I have set my wmv/avi/mpeg/divx/whatever mimetypes to invoke mplayer in a shell and use the default keyset to navigate. Sure beats YAPIGUI (Yet Another Poorly-Implemented GUI).
That's why we use "unofficial" debs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's why we use "unofficial" debs (Score:5, Informative)
Read the thread here [debian.org]
Re:That's why we use "unofficial" debs (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Christian offers a real and useful service to the debian users. Not all of them compile their kernel and software from source.
2. Next to mplayer, he also packages some other software (e.g. lame) which have been removed from debian, but which are ubiquitious. I hope that in term ogg will be a viable alternative, but 'it is getting there', not yet.
3. I've worked with Christian on some 'problem' packages (dependency on mp3lame). I've never had any problems communicating with him and he was always eager to help. He has always answered in a polite way to my questions and offered help AND rearranged his packages to meet my package needs.
4. As a result of my personal experiences AND following the mplayer site and developers a bit, I can only assume their attitude in mails. I wonder if they ever heard of the term _polite_ questions or remark. You should sometimes read the remarks and replys debian devolopers get from some upstream authors.
Fact of the matter is that, unless I have a terrible character judgment, one should be very careful in pointing fingers to Christian, he was packaging video/audio {de|en}coding software before any other distribution heard of these and was and still is offering a real service to the debian community.
Re:That's why we use "unofficial" debs (Score:3, Informative)
And Mandrake use PLF (Score:3, Informative)
However, many are available (including mplayer) in Mandrake RPM format via PLF [zarb.org] (the embarrassingly-named Penguin Liberation Front).
Instructions are even included for setting that site up as a URPMI repository ('urpmi' being Mandrake's equivalent to 'apt-get' - installation of packages, automatically resolving and installing dependencies). Note however, that some PLF packages require packages from Mandrake contrib repositories.
There are other legal problems with MPlayer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: There are other legal problems with MPlayer (Score:3, Interesting)
> MPlayer will probably be a permanently grey-area application legally.
My concern is where all those
The names of the
Re: There are other legal problems with MPlayer (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, only the work on codecs that have not been successfully reverse-engineered yet. A great deal of the codecs out there are currently handled by libavcodec, from the looks of things.
One suspects a bit of thievery going on here.This one doesn't. :-) The .dll's are only there to enable playback of not-yet-reverse-engineered formats. Given that MPlayer's key goal is "play as many different media types as possible, especially those that otherwise can only be played on Windows Media Player or Apple Quicktime", this seems like a perfectly valid approach until native decoders can be worked out.
And I wouldn't say that MPlayer is "thieving" from ffmpeg (whence libavcodec comes) either. Not only because libavcodec is FOR other projects to use for audio and video encoding and decoding, but because I've noticed that one or more of the MPlayer developers seem to be active participants in libavcodec development as well...
Not a legal problem, an attitude problem (Score:5, Informative)
The Mplayer home page [mp.dev.hu] doesn't explain the problem - it points you at a flame-war on a mailing list, which has couple of postings about "You suck! No, YOU suck! No, YOU suck and your COMPILER is UGLY! Well, YOUR father smells of Elderberrries and your Hovercraft is full of EELS!", and while it's possible that there's some more enlightening content farther down, there's nothing to suggest that there actually will be, or that this flame war will be any more enjoyable than the last 20 years of Usenet flame wars.
The Mplayer info page [mp.dev.hu] says that "MPlayer is GPL now. In the past it contained non-GPL code from the OpenDivX project, which did not allow binary redistribution. This has been removed." It doesn't actually appear to have the license, except perhaps in some hunk of code I'm not going to bother downloading now. If they say it's GPL, then they're obviously referring to the GPL [fsf.org], so I can distribute binaries if I want. If they've got other documentation that's more restrictive than this, well, this one's on their web page, though they probably should have provided a link to the GPL themselves.
MPlayer links to sites with binaries... (Score:5, Informative)
If they had a problem with distributing binaries, why would they link to them?
Sounds VERY fishy to me.
Re:MPlayer links to sites with binaries... (Score:4, Informative)
Binary packages are not an issue now, as they claim the code is 100% "GPL compliant".
BTW, mplayer has been included in the latest SuSE Linux.
Re:MPlayer links to sites with binaries... (Score:2, Informative)
It's an unuseable crippled version. The results were unnecessary bugreports of Suse users who couldn't "play DVDs/whatever". At the end most of them compiled it again themself.
GPL and mplayer and who knows better (Score:2, Insightful)
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 05:41:00PM +0100, Gabucino wrote:
>
> [SNIP]
>
>
>>Uhh... Yes, it is GPL, but it is _not free_ (MPEG4, faad, etc) !
>>Nor is MPlayer.
>
>
> I'm quite anxious to learn your understanding of the GPL. I'm sure it's
> most creative.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Emile.
>
Pretty much sums it up. Gabucino also goes into a long diatribe attacking xine and never quite grasps that all that could potentially accomplish is getting xine removed and not mplayer added.
Re:GPL and mplayer and who knows better (Score:3, Informative)
Well, look at their original reasons. (Score:2, Informative)
So befoe you flame them about a GPL, try to understand their (at least historical) reasons for asking this.
Re:Well, look at their original reasons. (Score:4, Informative)
It is unfortunate, the wording in their license, but perhaps you should benchmark and profile i386 binaries vs. -O2 -march (whatever)binaries. It really makes a world of difference...
You really need to build it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once built and optimised for your architecture it does run well, and on my poor little notebook (500MHz PIII), it beats the pants off media player under Win 2K.
Having to build from source is inconvenient, but unless MPlayer is linked statically, I reaaly thing that this is better than installing a prepacked binary.
Re:You really need to build it.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You really need to build it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is for MPlayer 0.90rc3-3.2.1. Note that this listing doesn't count the 74 Windows
(insert some random less-compressable stuff here to defeat the lameness filter. All this thing does is piss off legitimate users. The crapflooders have all gone home, you can turn off the gzip-nazi filter now, Taco!!)
Re:You really need to build it.... (Score:3, Informative)
# acquire
wget ftp://...mplayer-link.../MPlayer-0.90rc3.tar.bz2
# decompress source
tar jxvf MPlayer-0.90rc3.tar.bz2
# acquire useful directory state
cd MPlayer-0.90rc3
# [X] build a debian package
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
# fix various complaints about packages missing
# (best to do this in another window; must be root
# or apt-get set{u,g}id root, which is pure evil)
apt-get install fakeroot libpng12-0-dev libgtk1.2-dev
# do [X] again
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
#
cd
dpkg -i mplayer_0.90rc3-0_i386.deb
Whammo. You have mplayer. Ok, by "easy" I mean "repeatable sequence of commands", not "point and click", I guess.
Cheers
Brian
- Just when Ih think I'm out
Solution: (Score:3, Informative)
You know, like how they handled UW PINE.
Re:Solution: (Score:2)
Another Great PR Move for the GPL (Score:3, Insightful)
That is from one of the mesages in the thread [debian.org].
I would think that any rational person would be able to see the logic in this. However, apparently there are those that cannot. Amazing.
You see... the GPL throws the source at people who don't give a flying fuck about it (in the case of most end-users), and then followers of the GPL get their proverbial panties in a bunch when someone doesn't distribute the *binaries*. I don't get it.
Actually, more honestly, I don't really care. It's things like this that make Free Software zealots look like idiots in the eyes of the public. That is too bad, but until people realize that software is, well, software, and not some political instrument to stake your life on, these things will continue to occur.
We need Debian (Score:3, Insightful)
This discussion again shows to me how valuable the legal team on Debian are. We do not want free software to end up having legal problems due to ignoring licenses. Unfortunately the checking is hard and complicated work so it is fortunate that we can rely on the Debian team.
Just look at the current SCO issues and be grateful for all Debian do to avoid problems like this.
Dave
Our solution (Score:2, Flamebait)
We have since stopped using Debian since back at the beginning of the school year (September 2002). Between useless email fights like this one, to other arguments that were show-stopping and delayed new releases, I grew fed up.
I was glad to turn our school's IT system nearly 100% to Linux, but I was almost as glad to switch everything to a package-based, Gentoo Linux flavor.
The OS of Linux is great, but as for the extra flamebait cruft you see on the Debian list, that I can do without.
Re:Our solution (Score:2)
It's quite sad, really, watching innovation dies within Debian to be replaced by excessive political correctness. Debian used to lead in packaging (apt+deb) but now apt has been ported to RPM (see Conectiva [conectiva.com] and FreshRPMS [freshrpms.net]), Mandrake has uRPMi, and the Fink project [sourceforge.net] has co-opted apt/deb for binary distribution but added their parallel build-from-source-with-dependency system.
I have packaged quite a few RPMs [sourceforge.net] in the past, mostly due to the lack of compatible RPMs after RH8 came out - but the horrible mess that is debian build scripts put me off. There are even some alternative packaging scripts for Debian, surely a sign of problems, but they never really take off.
Here's my wishlist as an ex-Debian, soon-to-be Fink user (for the second time, my first OS X experience was held back by the lack of vector instructions in G3):
- Peace among developers
- Debian Desktop to succeed in making Debian more customer-friendly
- Faster release cycles (I thought their new testing system was meant to do that)
- Compile from source a'la Fink
Peace,
Gentoo (Score:3, Informative)
Gentoo is very similar to Debian in the way the packaging system works. You simply tell them what to get and they download and install it and anything else it requires.
Debian distributes binaries which are pre-compiled for your platform. For intel they're compiled against the 386 I believed. Debian is also slow to update due to testing, but that in turn makes it quite stable and reliable.
Gentoo is a bit more of a tinkerers OS. It downloads the source code for any package you want to install and it compiles it custom to your PC. My Gentoo system is compiled specifically for my Athalon XP system.
Also Gentoo tends to update more quickly than Debian, in part because just throwing the sources at your users is easier than packaging up and compiling/testing yourself.
I enjoy using Gentoo on my desktop OS, but I wouldn't use it on a server until it matures a little more. I also wouldn't use it on a slow computer as compiling source code can take awhile. I also wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't want to know what's going on under the hood of their desktop.
Gentoo by the way it's setup tends to walk users through the a lot of the core functions that make your OS tick. It doesn't hide your config files in GUIs. Even the installer is very much a hands on process where you manually mount, chroot and fdisk. But at the same time it has very nice documentation for these processes so even non-uber-geeks can work through the OS.
The main gist.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/200
The message basically outlines this:
xineplug_decode_ff.so 829032 - this is libavcodec, the MPEG4/DivX decoder
Did you pay the royalty to the MPEG Group?
They can come any time...
xineplug_decode_faad.so 164048 - this is the FAAD audio decoder, which is
just as illegal as libavcodec
Vidix - unusable ballast without libdha, which is
not packaged
nvidia_vid.so - part of Vidix.. Instead it is a
placeholder
printf("TODO")
Nice to know xine was packaged by people
who knew what they were doing
xineplug_decode_w32dll.so - code (from Wine) to load win32 DLLs
It's total legal isn't it..?
ASF demuxer - Microsoft already forced a GPL project
to remove it (VirtualDub)
I hope Debian is also ready to face this
xineplug_decode_gsm610.so - xine's gsm610 is GPL, MPlayer's is not?
Nice.
WE say it's GPL.
Its original author says it's GPL.
Debian-legal says we are all wrong??
Make me laugh.
Re:The main gist.... (Score:5, Informative)
You, in fact, pasted MPlayer's response as to why Xine should be left out if they leave out MPlayer.
All those files are Xine packages.
Thank you for proving my point.
They are not prohibiting binary distribution now. They did so in the past, but now they are not. The article should have said that the issue was about the FORMER legality of MPlayer, mostly because they broke some licenses earlier on so the could get a shipping player. I would have agreed with Debian then, but now that it is 100% GPL and allows binary distribution, this whole article is moot. Even if they said now that you can't build binary distributions, according to the licensing you could anyways. In the US, you can't enforce an "illegal" contract or agreement. The whole issue is moot and dead. That's why debian-legal has no clue what they are talking about, and it's why SourceMage GNU/Linux (I was former Video section maintainer), allows MPlayer into our grimoire. It's a no-brainer, really.
Seth Woolley
You are completely mistaken (Score:4, Informative)
The Debian people, though, have responded that they'll look into those Xine issues and that if they turn out to be true they'll yank Xine out of Debian too.
DZM
The Problem... (Score:3, Informative)
1) They use GPL & code under another license that isn't GPL compatible, plus their own code.
2) They never distributed a binary.
3) The released all that code.
4) Their code had an added clause that states you can't distribute binaries.
So the problem was, they used gpl & gpl incompatible code, so the resulting binary could not have been legal under any license. So they just simply didn't release a binary. I don't see a problem here. It's not against licenses to distribute GPL code next to gpl-incompatible code... it's just illegal to compile them together and distribute.
Sorry, this doesn't work (Score:5, Interesting)
This attempt at working around the GPL by having the user build the app has been tried before, by no less than Steve Jobs. Apple's Objective-C compiler was and is GCC-based, but originally Jobs wanted it to be proprietary. Apple came up with a scheme where the equivalent of a Makefile would take a pristine GCC tarball, plus the proprietary patch, apply it, and build a proprietary Objective-C compiler. However, the FSF lawyer (Eben Moglen) found precedents that he could use to convince Apple's lawyers that this strategy would fail. The reason is this: Apple would build and test the binary in house. They had a mechanism that would cause the bit-for-bit identical binary to appear on the user's disk. They have in effect created a mechanism for distributing a binary, and this binary is a derivative work of GCC. They can't do this without a license from the FSF. The details of the mechanism don't matter. The "mere aggregation" exception doesn't apply because the pieces being distributed are not logically separate.
Now, this gets us into a very controversial area: lots of folks object to this concept, because if taken to an extreme it would appear to prohibit people from telling other people how to do patches. Nevertheless, the Mplayer people should not assume that they have come up with a safe and legal way to mix GPL and non-GPL code. If they provide a Makefile that creates a binary, in a way that the binary the user gets is the same one they have, then they could well be sued by the owners of whatever GPL software they use.
I'm afraid I'm missing the big deal here... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Either MPlayer adjusts its code and licenses to conform to Debian's rules in order to be added to the Debian distribution
- Or MPlayer doesn't change anything and they don't get included in the distro
So why the flame war? It's Debian's distro, they can set the rules as they like. Likewise it's entirely MPlayer's decision to conform or break Debian's distro rules. And if MPlayer doesn't want to be included in Debian, nothing stops users from compiling MPlayer by source and adding it to their system, right? It's not the end of the world if a program isn't available by apt-get.Obviously if someone wants to fork MPlayer and create a version that is "Debian-able" they are certainly allowed to do that under the terms of the GPL. So I'm not quite sure why everyone's up in arms.
Re:I'm afraid I'm missing the big deal here... (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue, as pointed out by the Mplayer developers, is that Debian isn't consistent in the enforcement of their rules, making them seem quite hypocritical.
Dinivin
Re:I'm afraid I'm missing the big deal here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Debian makes mistakes -- everyone makes mistakes. But Debian usually tries to correct those mistakes. Back when Qt was GPL-incompatible, Debian briefly had KDE in the archives, which was a mistake. When someone pointed out the licensing problems, KDE was removed. At which point, the KDE folks went ballistic, and started shouting about how Debian was inconsistent and hypocritical because they had GPL'd packages using libForms (another GPL-incompatible library), and that proved that Debian had it in for the KDE folks, and it was all some evil plot. Unfortunately for this theory, Debian simply agreed that they'd made another mistake by accepting those packages, removed them, and that was the end of that.
Debian can be a little slow-moving at times (a common problem with all-volunteer groups), but if the complaints about Xine are valid, then I have no doubt that Xine will be gone (or fixed) soon enough.
Their arrogance and elitism are astonishing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Those are just a few quotes from Gabucino, an MPlayer developer posting to debian-devel...
Re:Their arrogance and elitism are astonishing... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Arrogance", no. "Intolerance", yes. I think if I were subject to the amount and kind of abuse heaped on them by people who don't agree with the focus that the MPlayer project has, I'd get pretty terse with people, too. Especially people emailling to say "you are just a fucking elitist"...
Think of it this way. Imagine you're a volunteer developer. Now imagine you're ALSO the tech support for the project.
NOW imagine some third party packages your project with their distribution.
Your phone starts ringing. Your email goes nuts. They're all saying "Your program is broken/deleted my files/raped my dog/etc.".
At first it's easy to be polite. "You say it doesn't work? Can you give me a description of what it's doing wrong? Um, I'll need more detail besides 'it doesn't run', does it give an error message of some sort? No? What does it do? Oh, it DOES give an error message. Can you tell me what it says? No, I mean read what it literally says...."
Not only does this sort of thing REALLY grate on any rational person's nerves very quickly, but it's extremely time-consuming to deal with and prevents you from actually DEVELOPING anything.
Having lurked on the MPlayer user mailing list for some time, I find myself actually somewhat sympathetic for the MPlayer developer's hard line on dealing with things like this.
Consider what MPlayer is SUPPOSED to be - the most capable and efficient media player available for *nix systems. This focus has never BEEN "make it pretty and simple", but rather "make it effective". This is an important point - everyone harassing the MPlayer team with demands (and they often are - "you have to make it easier to use", "this software cannot continue like this", etc.) are, in effect, trying to "hijack" the project into a different focus. MPlayer ISN'T XINE and isn't supposed to be. The Xine project IS more focussed on user-friendliness than MPlayer. That's by design.
The friction the MPlayer project seems to attract seems to come entirely from people who think they should change the focus of their project from what the DEVELOPERS want to what the complaintants want. This, to my mind, is silly. Xine is much simpler to use. If "simple to use" is what you want, Xine is the program you want. If you're willing to read some documentation and deal with slightly arcane and very flexible command-line arguments in exchange for broader capability and somewhat better performance, then MPlayer is what you want. Choice is good.
I think the "Xine vs. MPlayer" alleged war is about as real as the "Gnome vs. KDE" one, which is to say, not at all except for a few peripheral folks who THINK there is one. Xine and MPlayer seem to cross-pollinate ideas well enough. The Xine project figured out Sorenson 1 and wrote a native decoder. MPlayer said "great work, thanks" and incorporated the concept into MPlayer (Giving full credit to Xine, as I recall). They, in turn, managed to puzzle out use of windows DLL's to get Sorenson 3 decoding capability. From what I can see, I think this is now in the most recent Xine releases as well.
It's all good. Everyone relax. Nothing to see here....
GPL isn't a law. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, for crying out loud, GPL isn't a higher law given by some divine force that's gonna strike us down.
GPL is just a convenient wording of several conditions for published program. All the conditions are binding for the user, not the author.
We've been over this several times and it was stated that author can specify any additional conditions, even contradicting the GPL. This was the case for GPL-incompatible BSD advertising clause. It's enough to add permission to link the GPL code against such restricted code.
Nobody, not even RMS himself can prevent me from publishing my software with GPL license and additional condition that this guy that kicked my ass in fifth grade cannot use this code.
Robert
Re:GPL isn't a law. (Score:5, Informative)
GPL Paradox -- appropriate response? (Score:3, Interesting)
The GPL doesn't restrict what you can do with a piece of GPL code once you have it (to do otherwise would be a violation of the GPL). It only kicks in once you start distributing something with GPL code in it.
Similarly, the GPL can't prevent someone from distributing their own source code, even though it would (if compiled and linked with GPL code) not be legal to distribute.
In other words, if one feels that there may be GPL problems with their code, source-only distribution seems to be the appropriated thing to do.
Telling people not to distribute binaries is simply a warning to prevent them from violating the GPL themselves.
Not blatently sensible, and IANAL, but it seems to be legal.
MPlayer - packaging - debian (Score:5, Insightful)
What has become of Slashdot? Is it really a non objective flaming pool? Did nobody care to take at least a _short_ look at it before commenting stuff?
I took a _quick_ look. IIRC it's about the following:
1. binary packages of MPlayer in general
2. debian packages made by Marillat
3. license issues of MPlayer (GPL)
4. patent issues of MPlayer
5. why is xine in debian and MPlayer not?
6. Gabu's "stile of speaking"
I (almost) didn't see any objective statement about it so far, just crap.
1. There exist binary packages of MPlayer (see http://www.piorunek.pl/~dominik/linux/pkgs/mplaye
Their attutude is: Better no packages than bad packages as they have to read all bugreports about them (not the distributions). IMHO they're right.
2. They work to get good debian packages, Marillats packages were refused because at the time he provided them, they were illegal and full of bugs. We still get lot of complains by ppl using Marillats packages...
3. The developer really worked hard to get a 100% GPLed software. Many issues (like libmpeg2 and xanim(?)) are solved through mails with the authors.
4. There are mpeg4 patent issues with libavcodec.
5. But: the exact same issues apply to xine!! (e.g. it uses libavcodec too)
6. no comment, just stay objective
What I wanted to say: Please stay objective and don't start to write crap....
Makes sense to me (Score:3, Informative)
Some licenses are incompatible, even if they're all opensource. So what mplayer did was redistribute all the source, but you couldn't compile it together and redistribute it because of the license incompatibilities.
Distributing license-incompatible source together isn't illegal because it's not "linking". License incompatibilities don't come into effect until you link them together.
MPlayer does NOT have a license that says you can't redistribute binaries, but since compiling mplayer would link together incompatible licenses, that binary cannot be distributed without breaking the GPL.
So debian was free to redistribute binaries, as long as they didn't create binaries that linked in incompatible sources.
(This is about older versions of mplayer anyway.. the current versions of mplayer can and do have binaries being distributed)
Missing the point (Score:3, Informative)
If you can't legally redistribute, then most likely you can't legally compile it either.
This is what you don't seem to understand. The binary result has the same license as the source. If the source licenses are incompatible, the binary is illegal.
But it's okay it the user makes the illegal binary instead of the developers? This is your argument?
Sorry people... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the story submitter, and I must appologise for causing this much confusion. I read the blurb on the mplayer homepage and thought it would be interesting for you
As it turns out, the issue is much more complicated than I made it look, and instead of entertaining the
If I were an editor on this website, I would have refused my submission.
I'd like to apologise not only to the
Sorry again,
Protonman.
ps. Licence/License? I don't really care, I'm not a native speaker.
my favorite quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does debian-legal think they know what is GPL and what is not better than Mplayer and XAnim authors.
Well, gee, I don't know, why would a bunch of people who study licensing issue on a regular basis think they understand licensing issues better than a bunch of people who are focused on writing code?
Having programmers look for legal problems makes about as much sense as having lawyers review your code for possible bugs.
A complete and utter non-issue... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Debian folks are entitled to package and distribute Debian as they see fit.
Reminds of the KDE dustup.
That's when I switched from Debian to SuSE.
Glad I did.
Similar options abound for anyone who doesn't like the way Debian does things.
The Project From Hell (Score:3, Informative)
MPlayer might play every format, but the software is not particularly intuitive for someone who just wants to play the occasional video clip, the authors see fit to throw public temper tantrums on the project's website, and their support has garnished a lackluster reputation due to the attitude of the authors toward the uninitiated.
The simple answer to the question of why Xine gets more respect from major distributions is that Xine's authors conduct themselves with a far more professional attitude. Remember the MPlayer/Red Hat spat? MPlayer's authors refused to even deal with anyone using Red Hat 7.x because they claimed the compiler that shipped with Red Hat was buggy and problematic, when in fact it was their own code that was not up to the level of C compliance that the compiler required.
You attract more flies with honey. As it is, I don't even bother with MPlayer. Xine, coupled with the gXine frontend, makes a fantastic video player as far as I'm concerned, and it's far more intuitive. I'll take a friendly project over a back-biting one any day.
Simple solution to the no-binaries issue.. (Score:3, Interesting)
2. make sure the rpm or deb depends on all the nifty things you want to include, as well as gcc.
3. post-install:
#!/bin/sh
cd
make
make install
cd
rm -rf
Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, mplayer works quite well with gentoo
Licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if everything is reverse engineered then it would only save them from infringing on copyright but they would still have to pay the technology owners which means that at least mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 are out of the question ($ 2,50 per copy licensing fees). The same holds for several other formats which are not covered under a non commercial license.
I might get something wrong here but why can mplayer (and xine for that matter) use mpeg-1/2 divx, mp3 vivo and several other formats (including wma/wmv) without paying royalties to the respective copyright and patent holders and why doesn't anybody care about this?
May somebody please enlighten me about this issue?
Regards
Jeff
Re:Licensing? (Score:3, Interesting)
You will notice the ".hu" at the end of their URL. That tends to mean that US laws don't apply to them.
Well, besides their jurisdiction problem, there is also the matter of lawyer's fees. Take a look at the history of software patents... Unisys didn't give a damn about LZW until they noticed that there was critical mass, and people wouldn't be able to completely stop using LZW even if they wanted to. The same goes for the MP3 patents. They don't give a damn until there are large pockets from which they can pick.
Real men build from source (Score:3, Funny)
cd
make install
Yay BSD!
Erm... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, no MPlayer in Debian. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, this would cripple the program beyond useless and probably make Debian users think it was totally uncapable a program. I say, if you can't include a player like this in it's full glory, don't. Maybe they could provide some information to the user where to get MPlayer? But throwing it in the same toilet they threw Xine in (ie, leaving out everything that might make it useful), that can't be the answer...
Re:Some perspective (Score:3, Informative)
I think the debian team is a little childish about all that licensing, but hey, that's what you have source code or unofficial debs for. If the debian team can't make up their mind, the user can.
Re:Some perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Could someone perhaps link to the part of the thread that actually explains what the hell this is about, instead of to the personal abuse (Slashdot story) or the list archive (MPlayer site)?
Re:Some perspective (Score:2)
I don't know why the fuck people are talking about binary distribution, since MPlayer's always had everything downloadable from their site, at least as long as I've been using it.
I did notice Gabucino admitting that he hadn't properly made up changelogs for all the files they've taken and used... but does anyone care? More to the point, surely half the packages in Debian would be "illegal" if strict changelog records were required.
And then there's Gabucino's comment on MPlayer's homepage about Xine being allowed in Debian with libavcodec...? No clue.
Re:Some perspective (Score:2)
Well, actually, Qt has been GPL'd for a long time. but yes, that's a "classic" license war (that also went on at debian-legal for a very long time)
> MPlayer is slightly non-GPL, then
I think the difference in this case, is that they *are* using the GPL, but adding stipulations beyond it (i.e, no binary releases.) They should just use switch licenses to a BSD license, and add stipulations to that (which is perfectly legal).
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:2, Funny)
Avoid the GPL at all costs for your software.
but.. but... "GPL" and "costs" in the same sentence... me is confuzed
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:4, Insightful)
You're saying you should have the freedom to profit from my work against my wishes.
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:3, Interesting)
When I release GPL code, I don't care who does what with it so long as it remains available to everyone. The money is secondary. The code that I release on a subscription model is not GPL for obvious reasons. That money pays my bills. Not every project needs the GPL; use it where it makes sense.
-Hope
Re:it ain't? (Score:3, Informative)
Your understanding is incorrect. See Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money? [gnu.org]
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:4, Insightful)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:3, Funny)
That's what I tried to tell the federal agents when they came to confiscate the whole production run of my new video, "Mickey Mouse plays Twelve Favorite Metallica Hits", which I had produced and offered for sale on E-Bay.
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:5, Interesting)
So you CAN cgharge a fee to download. You can even package it up and sell it on store shelves. You CANNOT stop anyone who gets it from you from doing the same (or giving it away for free).
Now, you may dislike that too, but the specific restriction that you cited (that its not possible to charge for binaries) doesn't exist.
In fact, the original author can chose to distribute under a non-gpl license in addition to the GPL if he likes.
And getting back on topic...this sounds very similar to pine. Debian you will notice doesn't distribute pine because pine doesn't allow binaries built from modified source to be distributed. So debian has no license... so debian obeyed the licence.
the mplayer people ask why "Debian legal" thinks it knows better hwat the GPL means than they do. Its not that at all. Its that debian, as a distributer, at som elevel has to answer the question "Do we have license to distribute what we are distributing" and they are basing that decision solely on the text of the licenses involved. Its that simple.
Debian, by policy, does not violate software licenses. Quite simple. Debian also does not accept special licensing terms (ie "You the debian group may distribute this, but noone else may") as they are. Since debian is doing the distributing, its the debain people (not the authors of the stuff being distributed) that have to make the call as to whether the license gives them permission to distribute since it is debian that puts its neck on the chopping block if it distributes something they have no permission to distribute.
-Steve
(a rather inactive debian developer, who used to read the debian mailing lists and thinks this issue is nothing new)
Re:GPL is not "free" (Score:3, Interesting)
You could charge for the bandwidth. Just like Sun claimed that you can order a free Solaris CD on x86 from their website.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad to see a group of people with a consistent ethical code -- especially when those ethics haven't compromised for the sake of pragmatism. (I'm even happier when it's an ethical code that complements mine.)
It seems kind of funny to suggest that Debian needs to compromise its principles to "win the desktop", when the goal of Debian has always been to spread free software, not to "win" anything.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethics...smethics. The best thing about Debian is that they take a good hard look at the legal aspects of each software package so that you don't have to. If something is in Debian main then you can be pretty sure that someone with a clue has taken a gander at the license, and that is a big deal.
Folks can pretend that technical issues are more important than legal issues, but that's just not true. The software packages that don't pay attention to the legal issues eventually get tripped up by them. For example, think of all of the pain and agony that KDE could have saved if they had been careful about the licensing issues right from the start.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:3, Informative)
The OpenBSD folks do the same thing. It's a nice feeling to have a distro where they're serious about making sure no one else can dictate what can be done with a piece of the system--especially a critical piece. Take ipf, for example. They dumped Darren Reed's ipf in favor of a home-grown pf, all because of some licensing snakiness. And how many of us would figure that out?
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:3, Informative)
They seem to put a high value on their 'customers' never running into legal issues, while other distros seem to care more about what they can get away with.
totally missed point (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why it seems improper to insult them as "anal" when they are merely following the letter of their mandate.
Would you call Debian "anal" for say, refusing to distribute car tyres with every download? Of course not because car tyres are not what they do. The same is true for free/non-free. Software is either one or the other for some chosen definition and to blur the lines makes no sense.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, the ones that the Debian installer asks if you want to add when you first configure the system? Are those the hard-to-find "different sources"?
To "win the desktop" linux has to give users the ability to easily get the programs and packages that they need and want to use.
Debian does a terrific job of providing the packages that they are legally and ethically allowed to provide.
Sorry to rant, but I've noticed more and more lately how debian's philosophy is getting in the way of me getting the programs I want to use.
If that's the case, then you shouldn't installed Debian in the first place. The Debian Free Software Guidelines are published and clear; if you don't agree with their philosophy, you're quite free to install another completely free professional-quality distribution.
On the other hand, I love Debian for the exact reason you do not: I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I am 100% in license compliance with every piece of software on my system. I'd almost welcome a BSA audit - it'd be fun to yell "IN YOUR FACE!!!" every time they get snippety.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:2)
Yes.. I've always thought so. Like you, I was also a long-time Debian user, and I too switched from it to Gentoo. I know some people use Debian because it is the most "pure" distro, but I didn't. I used it because of apt. I used debian-unstable, and I noticed gradually that the wealth of new packages was going down the tubes. So I switched to Gentoo, which I am extremely happy with.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem, I think, is the fact that people don't really grasp that there are pragmatic differences of belief along with legal ones between the different distros of GNU/Linux.
With Debian, they are trying to create a distro which is GPL compatible through and through. And the thing is, if that means not including something in their distro, then they are not including that something. All to keep the legal issues of their distro as clean as possible.
This isn't saying that Debian is sacrificing quality, if anything, because of their approach, their distro probably works quite smoothly and efficiently.
Nothing prevents you from acquiring the packages you want to use. They are only enforcing their right to not include packages and/or softwares which violates their license and/or sense of what is right/wrong.
It's just a different way of seeing to how things work.
I've switched from Slackware to Redhat. From that to Mandrake. Then from that to Suse, which is what I'm currently using. Now, I'm thinking of switching to Debian.
Will the restrictions they have on the default distro hinder my experience on my Linux box? Probably not. If I need code, I certainly know how to go and perform the "download, configure, make and make install" dance. I'm no stranger to coding and software installations.
The point is, there will be people who value one facet of life greater than another. Some people could care less about licenses. That's fine. Just understand that there are those who do.
Not just licenses, but philosophy, ethics, morals, and laws.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want Linux to "win the desktop" then you should make that your priority and work in that direction, but please don't assume that is the goal of every Linux distribution under the sun. Debian is a quality distro that attempts to adhere to a fairly strict set of standards. I personally appreciate that they adhere to those standards because it's one less thing for me to worry about when using the distro.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:2)
P.S.: I'm not claiming that it's prettier. Merely that they have played things legally safer. And this may someday be important. Courts have made some quite peculiar decisions recently. Suppose, e.g., that MS bought SCO... well, OK. Those patents are peripheral. And most of the other questionable ones have expired. But nobody knows what someone will pop-up with tomorrow. If hyperlinks can be patented, what can't? (Well, the last I heard BT hasn't been able to collect. But if MS owned the patent...)
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget that your free to choose whatever distro you like. Like I said above, I now use Gentoo for my desktop for a variety of reasons (all source, newer packages, faster due to optimisations, etc) but I use Debian on all my other boxes.
It's an unfair comparison, to put Gentoo and Debian together. Gentoo is like Mandrake (IMHO), it's a desktop distro. It's got great stuff that's pretty new, it's fast, etc.
Debian is, to me, a base distro. It's a rock. NOTHING gets into Debian unless it's been well tested. If you run Stable, you should NEVER have a single crash, it's that stable. The fact is, Debian's unstable branch is equivelent to most other distros out that, in my expirence. If you want a rock solid server, use Debian. If you want to create a great desktop distro, and want a great foundation to build on, use Debian.
Also don't forget that Debian is not just another distro, it's THE distro. Where would free software be without Debian? If you have some odd architecutre, what distro will you run? You can choose some little distro that no one has ever heard of. You could use Linux From Scratch. Or you could use Debian. Debian is on tons of different archs and it's identicle on all of them. Debian is largely responsible for for the porting of, and testing of, XFree on many of the more exotic platforms (IIRC).
Debian may be slow to get new packages, but Debian has a quality that just can't be matched. I may use Gentoo for my desktop system, but I use Debian for everything else. Why? For one thing, whether the machine is a Mac, a PC, or anything else, it looks just the same. I don't have to remember 30 diferent filesystem layouts from 35 diferent distros. I don't have to keep a cheat sheet of how to install packages on that computer (was it "rpm -Uvh", or "emerge", or "cast", or...). Debian may not be as good a desktop distro as Mandrake, Gentoo, Suse, or others. But the fact is that it's the best for just about everything else. Debian is the swiss-army knife of distros. Any platform, any task, anything; Debian can do it. It runs out of the box on 386s or on the newest P4.
In short, Debian is one of the best things to happen to free software, IMHO. Just because it no longer works for you doesn't mean that it now sucks! If I was a corporation deploying Linux on lots of desktops and I wanted something that wouldn't cause me any problems, I'd run Debian.
You can say that think kind of issue is what's keeping Debian off the desktop, and you might be right. You can say that it's the kind of thing that proves that some projects can just get too large to work well as OSS. But it's these kind of issues that make Debian so good. So please don't go saying "Debian will die because of this," when the fact is this is what makes Debian so strong.
And if you don't like the direction that Debian is going in, change it. The elections for the top positions on the Debian project is about to be held. Run for a position.
But I guess it's just easier to whine here on /. than to actually try to influence things the correct way.
Re:The downfall of debian (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flaming of Xine (Score:2)
Of course, xine has a non-assholy devel team, which gives it lots of brownie points.
Re:Flaming of Xine (Score:2)
You're kidding, right? On the whole, Xine's interface is not "terrible", but it's file-selector widgets blow goats.
Re:looks like a messy "debate" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:frightening (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is this nebulous "we" that thinks of proprietary software houses as "enemies"? Most software in the real world is non-Free, simply because most companies have no interest in releasing their widget-manufacturing software to the world, primarily because noone has ever asked for it. I've written custom software to track candle inventory; I don't recall seeing "candlewarehousing" as a category in the FreeBSD ports system.
Mplayer is a great program, and has made many contributions to the community and innovations to media applications in general (QuickTime, for example).
I wasn't aware that Mplayer is an Apple product.
Do not forget that mplayer is a powerful tool in our battle against those who would destroy us.
Adjust your tinfoil hat, or grow up.
Re:frightening (Score:4, Insightful)
> Source community. I'd much prefer, as would we
> all, a focus on our true enemies,
The world isn't black and white, it has shades of every color. Arguments like this, the self policing of the open source community, will in the long run make open source stronger.
I wouldn't have it any other way, sometimes the best way to get a problem solved is to bruise some egos.
Re:What a clusterfuck (Score:3, Interesting)