Josselin Mouette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > We don't want to receive the endless flow of mails asking about why the > > newest, apt-get'ed MPlayer doesn't play ASF/WMV files (a very significant > > part of the streaming media on the Internet). > > If we don't want to include this support, this is not your problem. E.g. > xine in Debian has WMV9 support stripped off, and there would be no > reason for mplayer to include it if there are legal issues with it.
Should this perhaps be mentioned in the package description? In http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/xine-ui.html there is no mention of WMV, but there is a link to http://xine.sf.net/ for a more complete list of supported audio/video formats, and http://xine.sf.net/ says that xine decodes WMV. I'm not saying you should write "Don't bother getting this crippled Debian package; get the upstream source instead", but I think it's only fair to tell people if functionality has been stripped off. You could include a link to freepatents.org by way of explanation.
