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

[Romain Dolbeau]

D Richard Felker III wrote:

>>Samba, Apache, Cups are key components of MacOS X. They are GPL but
>>distributed and used with MacOS X which not released under GPL.
> 
> No they're not. They're daemons which run on MacOSX.

And Apache isn't GPL, anyway.

> It does not matter. GPL does not permit you to make QuickTime modules
> out of GPL code.

The GPL prevent "derived work" IIRC. Nobody ever went
to a court so see what a judge think a "derived work" is.
It's very easy to argue than a component that links to
a pre-existing, published interface is NOT a "derived work".

After all, an ELF or MACH-O loader IS a published interface
to which you need to "link". So why can non-GPL OSes load
GPL software, or GPL OSes load non-GPL software ?

> No, into the QuickTime framework, which is NON-FREE. This is not
> acceptable. If you go forward with this project you will be flamed
> badly in public, and possibly subject to legal action from MPlayer
> developers, if it is feasible. So please drop it now.

MPlayer is already linked to QuickTime, in MacOS X.
And to a few other frameworks like OpenGL or Cocoa.
Are you going to claim MPlayer is already breaching
the GPL by itself ? Or do you claim that doing the
exact same thing is legal if the loader is a shell
(some of them non GPL, not everyone uses bash),
but not if it is QuickTime Player ? What if the module
was a wrapper that simply launched mplayer via exec() ?

Seems to me more politics than anything else. That's
fine, it's *your* code, and you can do whatever you
want with it, but I think you need something more
restrictive than the GPL for what (I understand)
you want.

And just in case somebody should wonder, the tiny
bits I've contributed to mplayer and ffmpeg can
be relicensed under the LGPL if it's needed (this
is relevant, as it was mostly AltiVec code that
could find its way to a QuickTime module).

(I hope my asbestos suit will hold, it hasn't been
used in a long time :-)

-- 
Romain Dolbeau
Speaking for myself, not my employer