[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: .deb .. yadayada
Franck Arnaud
franck at nenie.org
Wed Jan 22 14:46:37 CET 2003
> mencoder is mpeg encoder, and debian does not distribute
> those for some weird patent or something reasons.
This is not really weird, or some border-case patent, there's
a whole pile of patented things in MPEG some of which probably
do make sense. If MPEG encoders were included in Debian, anyone
selling a Debian CD for $1 would have to pay licensing fees
for MPEG (like Apple pays for mpeg4 in the quicktime player).
Mplayer and Lame are fine as source code, because source
code is just a description of how to do MPEG and not an
actual product. If the patent owners were bothered, they could
ask anyone who compiles and uses an open source MPEG encoder
to pay a license, but I guess they're not bothered as long
as it's a marginal thing (and collecting fees from
individuals seems impractical).
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