Include MPlayer in beta?

[Jef Spaleta]

Bryan W. Headley wrote:

> Funny, I read it the other way: "..to prevent unwanted crippled 
> distribution..." He doesn't want the package to be associated with the
> crippled functionality certain packagers have visited on mplayer, and
> is mulling what he can do. I appreciate his problem...

I think someone on friendly terms with the mplayer author...should nudge
'em into looking at using trademark law as a tool...instead of patent
law to coerse the behavior of the distributors who want to use as much
mplayer technology as they can legally get away with. Software patent
law is just frelling evil. But if there is a concerned about tarnishing
the mplayer "brand" by redistribution of limited functional variants of
the mplayer codebase...then maybe there is room via trademark law...to
protect the mplayer project name...and still have room for Suse or
whomever to take that freely redistributable codebase, name it something
else, and use it.

For all the mud we sling in Red Hat's direction for having a stated
trademark policy regarding their distribution, it does protect their
brand name against poor quality variants in a way that the mplayer
author seems to want to do with the mplayer brand.

And I can't but help smirk at the idea that the mplayer author might
have to think one of Red Hat controversial policies is a good
idea...there would be an delicious irony in that.
 
-jef"is it bad to be hoping the hurricane floods where i live just
enough so i can stay home friday?"spaleta 
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