[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: MPlayer G2 (vlindos)

[Clemens Wächter]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:53:53 +0200
Gábor Lénárt <lgb at lgb.hu> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 06:23:17PM +0100, Balatoni Denes wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > Another advantage of modularization is that 3rd parties can write plugins,
> > and can distribute them separately in a convenient form (ie. not a patch)- no 
> > need to beg here for inclusion in cvs. 
> 
> Yes, but we should declare here that we don't want 'binary only' modules
> for mplayer ... It's quite annoying not to be able to solve problems
> and tracking bugs just because we haven't got ANY source ...
> And of course binary level API compatibility is quite hard question ...
> 

I guess it's pointless, too. The companies today do not only want to make
the thing working, they want even more. Unfortunately its not only about
having a good file format, or making it a standart, its also about digital
restriction management and copy protection etc. 

So my point is, if we really made a API which would support binary only
plugins then no third party would want to make one as long as further data
processing without the plugins consent is possible. And that will be possible
as long as mplayer G2 is opensource (forever). At least that is what 
I experienced in the past. 


Clemens