[MPlayer-users] Mplayer not fully Free/GPL software?! eventhough the webpage says

[Clemens Wächter]

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002 18:51:03 +0200
Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:

> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> Clemens Wächter writes:
>  > > >  > divx4linux is not GPL, and this file belongs to divx4 support
>  > > >  > if you don't use divx4 or xvid (neither of them is gpl) thsi file is not
>  > > >  > used
>  > 
>  > It is strange but I have looked at divx4_vbr.c and it distributed under
>  > the gpl though it is not fully gpl. 
> 
> What do you mean by that?  Who is distributing it under the GPL?
> 

This is how I understood the file header:

/*
 *  divx4_vbr.c
 *
 *  Copyright (C) Thomas <D6>streich - June 2001
 *
 *  2-pass code OpenDivX port:
 *  Copyright (C) 2001 Christoph Lampert <gruel at gmx.de> 
 *
 *  This file is part of transcode, a linux video stream processing tool
 *      
 *  transcode is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
 *  any later version.
 *   
 *  transcode is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 *  GNU General Public License for more details.
 *   
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with GNU Make; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
 *  the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. 
 *
 */


/**********************************************************
 *                Two-pass-code from OpenDivX             *
 *                                                        *
 *  Large parts of this code were taken from VbrControl() *
 *  from the OpenDivX project, (C) divxnetworks,          *
 *  this code is published under DivX Open license, which *
 *  can be found... somewhere... oh, whatever...          *
 **********************************************************/
 

My interpretation of this is:
1.) This file is GPLed. You should have recieved a copy of
the GPL whith this
2.) This belongs to transcode
3.) Header ends here
4.) A part of it has been copied from the OpenDivX project
But I have no idea where to get this license or what it says, but
I say we use the GPL here.....


Please let me know if I misinterpreted that. I have just read the
OpenDivX license, at least it is not too restrictive. Looks
like the only prohibited actions are charging fees, changing
it without notice and removing references to the license.

IANAL, but looks like this file does not conform to the OpenDivX license
since it does not information about what and when changed, and it does
not contain a proper reference to the license.

One reason more to reimplement it...