Josselin Mouette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a tapoté : > Le mer 08/10/2003 à 00:39, Gabucino a écrit : > > 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. > > > Debian actually forgets the legal issues in the case of xine (please don't > > argue, a year has passed since this argument of mine was raised first, and > > no > > effect to this very day), so *please* don't come with this line. > > Another issue is that the xine authors have always been cooperative > instead of ranting about this and that. > > Anyway, after all successive problems we encountered with mplayer, the > maintainer will have a hard time convincing the ftpmasters that his > package is 100 % free software, and free of patent issues. You can call > this discrimination, I will call this careful attention towards some > people who already proved to be incompetent regarding legal issues.
While I completely agree with the rest of this message, there is no reason to threat mplayer in a very special way: if no one can give a reason to reject mplayer, there is no reason to reject mplayer, like any other project. While mplayer must be checked carefully, if mplayer is currently DFSG-compliant, it should not be complicated to convince ftpmaster to let Debian users having mplayer. The historical account of the mplayer team should not cause rejection of mplayer. Regards, -- Mathieu Roy Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org Not a native english speaker: http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english