[wplug] mplayer

[jsbillings at mac.com]

A good explaination from linux:

http://lists.insecure.org/linux-kernel/2000/Sep/1491.html

--jonathan

On Friday, December 21, 2001, at 10:40 PM, Zach Paine wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 04:35:08PM -0500, Procario, Michael wrote:
>> There was an article on Linuxworld (www.linuxworld.com) recently about
>> mplayer. He mentioned that there is a gui but you have to enable it 
>> when you
>> build it. It is not default. The article characterized mplayer as a 
>> good
>> program with a rotten install and documentation.
>
> Interesting side note:
>
> mplayer has an interesting history w/ the GPL.  As you can see from this
> google cache:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:r-
> HBJcgedLE:www.mplayerhq.hu/+mplayer+gpl&hl=en
>
> In November one of the programmers went off on the GPL and said (poorly
> translated I believe)
>
> 	On a press conference, A'rpi said the big truth: he hates GPL!
> 	Well this sounds very rude from him, but let everyone know what
> 	happened! The poor fella tried to compile a flash disk driver
> 	into the kernel to boot from it and... it wouldn't! The little
> 	geezer is non-GPL so he can't be compiled into the kernel, which
> 	is in fact GPL! Let me quote him:
> 	GPL SUX - Utalom!!! - kibaszott szemet! - which I now don't
> 	want to translate to english. Now he has rm -rf /*GPL* in
> 	crontab.
> 	Order MPlayer - Boycott GPL! T-shirts NOW!
>
> That certainly seems to lack a ring of truth.  The nvidia kernel driver
> is non-GPL and it works in the kernel... maybe the translation is just
> bad.
>
> On the current webpage (mplayerhq.hu/homepage/news.html) there is a
> story about a Russian programmer porting (read: hacking together)
> mplayer to OS/2 without giving credit to the authors of the original
> code.  The authors of mplayer (rightfully) became very upset and the
> issue still hasn't been resolved.
>
> While they claim to dislike the GPL, mplayer is in fact licensed under
> it, and it sounds like they are trying to use it to have the OS2.ru guys
> give them credit.
>
> Interesting licensing story... what do you guys think of all this?
>
> 	-Zach
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