[Slightly OT] Re: Ranter or evangelist?

[gilpel at altern.org]

Note: Sorry, thee preceding mess wasn't the answer I was planning to send.

Rahul Sundaram wrote:

> On 07/28/2009 09:56 AM, gilpel at altern.org wrote:
>
>> Tim replied that asx files were needed in pages where the video is
embedded. You didn't answer Tim.
>
> It wasn't a question.

No, you got this right, it surely wasn't a question.

> Yes. You have been told many times already. Fedora CANNOT include
mplayer due to legal reasons (ie) some of these codecs infringe on US
patents and redistribution of codecs for a distribution legally based in
US would invite lawsuits.

If you take a look at this page:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/

you will see that some codecs are named "essential". Even though I admit
knowing very little in the matter, I believe those codecs do not "infringe
on US patents". Couldn't the other codecs be packaged separately and be
distributed through rpmfusion?

This way, GMplayer would work with MPlayer as Totem does with gstreamer,
as you explain here for gstreamer:

> Codecs that can be included by everybody and good quality (good), codecs
> that are of not good enough quality (bad), misc (bad-extras), codecs
that > are good quality but have patent issues (ugly) and finally a
interface to > ffmeg (gstreamer-ffmeg).

Why is it impossible to include the "ugly" equivalent for MPlayer? This,
and only this, is what I don't understand.