[MPlayer-users] mplayer from FreeBSD ports fails to build/compile

[Reimar Döffinger]

On 31 Jul 2011, at 04:11, Raimund Steger <rs at mytum.de> wrote:
> Reimar Döffinger wrote:
>> The problem is that FreeBSD by default comes with a 7 years (!!)
>> old version of binutils, which is not supported for 64-bit builds.
> 
> Ah yes, I see.
> 
> Because of 'Licensing issues', according to http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/custom-gcc/article.html

Laziness issues rather IMO. It may be a honest mistake, but I don't take kindly to such vague and misleading statements as made there.

> Given that FreeBSD has been eyeing LLVM for quite some time now in the wake of GPLv3, we won't probably see a GCC upgrade in the base system.

First, LLVM won't help, it still needs binutils/gas.
Secondly, FreeBSD trunk is updated to 2.17.50 which is over two years newer (not sure if new enough though, but I think it is). That version is still GPLv2, which is why I claimed laziness issues above.
Lastly, if they don't want to update they'll just have to do some maintenance work themselves and not just let their base system rot.