Re: [MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: help on libmpdemux usage (Modifié par Jérôme Cornet)

[Adam Rice]

D Richard Felker III wrote:
> QuickTime itself is non-free. Making a derivative work of MPlayer
> which is linked in as a component of non-free code (QuickTime) is not
> permitted by the GPL, as far as I can tell. LGPL would be required for
> something like this, and MPlayer is intentionally GPL rather than
> LGPL. Whether you release source is irrelevant.

As far as I know, QuickTime loads codecs at runtime. Thus the codec is 
not linked into QuickTime. So the only two relevant questions are:

a) Does Apple place restrictions on the licenses under which third-party 
QuickTime codecs may be distributed?
b) Is binary code under a GPL-incompatible license linked into the codec?

I would expect the answer to both of these questions to be "no". In some 
circumstances it could be legal even if the answer to the second 
question was "yes", as QuickTime is an OS component under MacOS, and the 
GPL has a specific exception for that.

As an aside, the GPL places no restrictions on "Making" anything. It 
only places restrictions on distribution, and only on binaries at that.

I should point out that these comments apply to GPL v2. Some people 
consider the ability to make GPL'd plugins for proprietary software to 
be a loophole that needs to be fixed in a future version. It seems to me 
this can't be done without placing restrictions on use, which would make 
the GPL no better than the proprietary software licenses it seeks to 
replace.

Adam