[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] Use external libs to handle rar subtitles

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 09:25:50PM +0400, Vladimir Mosgalin wrote:
> Hi Rich Felker!
> 
>  On 2005.10.26 at 12:15:59 -0400, Rich Felker wrote next:
> 
> > This is definitely violating the GPL on any other GPL code (i.e. code
> > we did not write) that's included in MPlayer. IMO it even violates it
> 
> Why? The GPL says that GPL and non-GPL code can't coexists in the same
> tarball? As long as "the libunrar/ dir is under xxx license, the rest is
> under GPL" is mentioned in license, what's the problem.

It says that if you make a derivative work of the GPL code, the entire
combined work must be licensed under the GPL. In any sane definition,
a collection of code intended to be linked together, with actual
code/scripts that does does linking included the tarball, is certainly
one derivative work. This is well-established.

> > for us to distribute GPL-incompatible code separately with the
> > intention that it be linked to MPlayer, including binary codecs.
> 
> Not linked. dlopen'ed. That's the difference.. If the user decides to
> remove libunrar mplayer will continue to work, only will lose some
> non-essential functionality.

Doesn't matter. It's still linked whether or not it's one file or two.
This is well established; see the ObjectiveC case.

> libunrar also can be replaced with newer
> version or by some GPL code with the same functionality and it won't
> affect mplayer. GPL allows that kind of thing.

Then please provide us this GPL code with the same functionality. I've
been waiting for it.

Rich