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MPlayer Licence Trouble With A Twist

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."

14 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. my pussy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    no, someone's going to make me type make, make install! why are you so mean?

    oh god my pussy hurts!

    1. Re:my pussy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      This is not offtopic:

      no, someone's going to make me type make, make install! why are you so mean?

      oh god my pussy hurts!

      The article is about mplayer only be distrubuted as source. Thus the line 'make me type make, make install.' That's how you generally compile source in a decent GPL program. This was a troll or possibly flamebait. It was NOT offtopic.

      Really, it was a social commentary on the computer geek world. So much hubub over something that has nothing to do with the price of eggs anywhere.

  2. Obligatory VLC Reference by philovivero · · Score: 3, Offtopic

    Not VNC, VLC. Videolan Client.

    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.

  3. Re:"legality" of mplayer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Parent is not flamebait. The article actually called non-GPL licenses illegal.

  4. Mod parent up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I thought it was really funny

  5. Question The Legality of George W. Bush by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Who believes that this fool participates in decision-making?

    Cheers,
    W00t

    Get Your War On

  6. please mod this +8 LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    plz thx

    1. Re:please mod this +8 LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Moderation is limited to +5 you invertebrate. Did you fail grade 1 math?

  7. John Wayne.. is that you? by CausticWindow · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Is this me?

    Sad But True

    --
    How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
  8. Re:frightening by Flamerule · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
    Jesus dude, have you even read the books? Boromir and Faramir are brothers; their father is Denethor, Steward of Gondor.

    (I'd link to The Encyclopedia of Arda, but their servers have been bitchslapped since The Two Towers came out, and their site is slower than hell.)

  9. Flame war? What flame war?? by ch-chuck · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    woo+! I finally won!!
    -
    COMMAND? 5
    TORPEDO COURSE (IN DEGREES)? 18.43
    TRANSLATES TO 2.57778
    TRACK: 7 - 7 6 - 8 5 - 8
    KLINGON DESTROYED!

    IT IS STARDATE 3457
    THE FEDERATION HAS BEEN SAVED!
    YOU ARE PROMOTED TO ADMIRAL
    36 KLINGONS IN 36 YEARS. RATING= 1000
    TRY AGAIN?

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  10. Re:Another Great PR Move for the GPL by kevin+lyda · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    you're a moron.

    the complaint is not that binaries are not distributed. the problem is the the mplayer developers have licensed their code under the gpl AND said that people are NOT ALLOWED to distribute binaries. the gpl does not allow that kind of restriction.

    what's the point of distributing your code under a license if you're going to ignore it. when i write code i write what i mean, otherwise it doesn't work right. shouldn't the same logic apply to a license?

    --
    US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
  11. Re:Dear Fascist (Read "Bush") Sympathizer: by ScottKin · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'd much rather have a President that was concerned about National Security, AIDS & the Economy than one who was thinking about the next time he could have a meeting with that "aide" or how he was going to hide that little windfall from that Condo deal - not to mention the deal with the Chinese where we sold them Top Secret missile design info. Nothing like selling-out your country when you're the (supposed) leader of that country - but since he was the left-wing/Liberal/Democraticn Party's "man", they'll look the other way just to get into power and do to the country what Monica did to "Slick Willie".

    Get some perspective, people!!!

    ScottKin

    --
    I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!
  12. Re:GPL is not "free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Right. Because nobody would flame you for pointing out that "Windows liscensing (sic) is terrible," therefore it is not very effective as flamebait.

    You seem to misunderstand what "Flamebait" means. It's a type of trolling where you make an asinine statement with the specific goal of raising the hackles of other people in a discussion forum. In other words, "baiting" people to "flame" you. Get it now?