[MPlayer-dev-eng] MPlayer licensing [and lotso other stuff as I'm typing...]

[Felix Buenemann]

Hi,

IMHO we should really start clearing mplayer licensing and make it visible to 
everyone.

1. Do we want to make it fully GPL?
If yes, what parts are clashing with GPL, is it only OpenDivX? That can be 
cleanly kicked out nowadays.
Arpi: do you want to make your code GPL, too?

2. Mark licensing
We need something like DOCS/COPYING that lists the licenses used in mplayer.
Additionally every sourcefile should contain a notice under which license it 
comes, be it GPL or Arpis special license.
In case Arpi wants to keep his special license, he has to write up a document 
that contains the license terms to use his code.

IMHO the best thing is to rule out external non-GPL code from mplayer and 
make it fully GPL, because then we can be fully assured of our code being 
protected by it and with it by the FSF.
Ok I know you think now: But WTF then with binary packages? Yes, we cannot 
prohibit them anymore then, but we can still deny bugreports and discourage 
binary packages.
There will always ne people doing binary packages, even IF we keep current 
situation that prohibits them, so we gain near to nothing by that. People 
that csre about if it is discouraged to make binary packages won't do them, 
and they won't do them if it prohibited. The ones that don't care about it 
being discouraged will IMO still do packages if it's forbidden.
So the binary thing is nothing we have really control, so we shouldn't fight 
against it.

Rather improve our mailinglists mechanisms by enforcing subscription and make 
sure users answer set of questions so they don't send improper mails eg. 
bugreports on binary builds.

Second prob you thought about with binary builds was that it would make 
people think of mplayer as shit, because pre-compiled stuff would be slower, 
but there is a very simple solution to this:
Simply add a printf at mplayer startup that states: "If you are experiencing 
performance problems, please read DOCS/SPEED"

In there (or a html like speed-issues.html) put something like:
"If you are using binary distributions of MPlayer, which is strongly 
discouraged, be aware of the fact that they degrade MPlayer's performance by 
not allowing it to make full use of the target system's hardware.
So if you are experiencing speed problems with MPlayer, try building it from 
source yourself first and also try cvs version as it might include major 
speed improvements or new features."

And in case a user is happy with the binary, it has positive effect for us of 
making mplayer more popular by spreading it to more systems than possible by 
source-only distribution, which helps us to gain World Domination even faster 
;-)

PS: Our current license wars keep us more time from developing then maybe few 
unneeded bugreports, a RTFM type message is surely faster answered then 
licensing flamebait!

Btw. we should remove stuff like the "GPL sux" from our public homepage, this 
kind of personal arguments are something for irc but nothing to put on our 
homepage. If you like put it to developers personal pages, but having it at 
the front mplayer page makes it seem to represent the meaning of the whole 
mplayer team, which is inapropriate. And additionaly the more flamebait we 
would on the page, the more flaimbait we get back, which keeps us from 
developing mplayer by having to deal with it.
And we should aswell stop to insult other people on the page, there are 
better ways to say that other people did something bad, without insulting 
them, this sort of reporting IMHO brings us much more discredit than sympathy 
from others.
I know Gabu, you like to flame ;), but does it have to be on our front page?

IMHO we're better of keeping the flaming in private and only put the facts to 
the page. Or if you can't insist flamin in public, better way would be to 
state the fact and add the flamebait as a comment marked with it's author, so 
it's clear it's a personal meaning and not the general meaning of all team 
members.

Actually in such a big and popular project we must deal a bit with diplomacy, 
wheter we want it or not. And dunno if you like the currently growing meaning 
of "mplayer people do great stuff, but their attitude sucks"?

Ok, tell me what you think of this and don't flame me to death for it ;)

-- 
Best Regards,
	Atmos
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- MPlayer Developer - http://mplayerhq.hu/ -
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