[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] (mencoder) lavc option "notch_matrix"

[Diego Biurrun]

D Richard Felker III writes:
 > On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 10:24:02AM +0200, Alex Beregszaszi wrote:
 > > > Included is a patch to add the lavc (encoding) option "notch_matrix".
 > > > (The KVCD "Notch" Quantization Matrix)
 > > > 
 > > > So you can use: 
 > > > mencoder -voc lavc -lavcops notch_matrix
 > > The main problem of this is that it's not free...and it's license is not
 > > compatible with the GPL, so we aren't allowed to include, that's why
 > > I've settled to the way below. (see http://kvcd.net/, if anyone who
 > > understands GPL and law better, please have a look at it, if it's legal
 > > to include with GPL, I1m not against it)
 > 
 > IMO this is nonsense. Coefficients needed for encoding are not
 > themselves copyrightable; only the actual publication in which they
 > originally appeared is under copyright.

I'm also very doubtful of the illegality of including this.

On their homepage

  http://www.kvcd.org/portal/articles.php?lng=en&pg=20

it says

  The KVCD "Notch" Quantization Matrix is Copyright (c) 2002, 2003 of
  Softronex Corporation. Please contact us for commercial use.

GPL is not commercial use, is it?  How you can restrict reusing of a
matrix that you publish on your homepage is beyond me.  I doubt it is
possible, it's less than 20 lines, but IANAL.

Diego