[MPlayer-users] Re: License

[Cyan Ogilvie]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 04:05:13PM +0300, Tomi Ollila wrote:
> Tuesday Oct 9 12:40:36 +0200 2001 Tom Mraz <t8m at centrum.cz> wrote:
> > 
> > Yes, Mplayer actually violates the GPL. Because you can't distribute
> > anything which is derivative of some GPLed work with different license than
> > GPL. The license of the included things would have to be at least LGPL and
> > then you would have to include these included things by dynamic linking at
> > runtime (no static linking). Other way you aren't allowed to distribute the
> > program.
> > So GPLed program isn't possible to link with proprietary codecs DLLs.
> 
> How does mplayer module linking differ from Linux module linking in this
> issue. Linus allows proprietary modules to be linked w/ Linux kernel.
> Linux license is GPL and upto now no-one has loudly attacked this
> issue.

Afaik this (the kernel) is a specifically excluded instance, as is
libc.

Cyan