Apologies to AJ and the ftpmasters. I found the *important* part of the thread, which I'd apparently missed during December, in which the ftpmasters...
drumroll.... explain what would be needed for mplayer to go into Debian now, barring finding additional problems. Congrats Jeroen van Wolfellaar, ftpmaster extraordinare, not afraid to take on the difficult cases (he also managed the REJECT on rte IRRC). From http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00888.html: (Jeroen) >Basicly: Drop mpeg encoding from mplayer source package -> definitely >less problems getting through NEW. ... > I suggest you upload stripping all the mpeg encoding stuff, pending > answer to that difficult question. However, what you do, is your choice > -- if you prefer to wait and are not planning to strip mpeg encoding > support out of the source package, that's not something the ftp-master > team will have any say on. ... > I'm not aware of any fundamental reason why mplayer couldn't be in > Debian. ... > However, removing > encoding stuff would bypass the main problem that we have with mplayer > right now, and then the answer to this question can then be researched > in parallel to an mplayer-with-only-mpeg-decoding being available from > Debian. ... (A Menucc) > > 3) what other problems should we fix ? > > (please read http://people.debian.org/~mjr/legal/mplayer.html > > to know what has been already fixed ) (Jeroen) > I don't know of any at this moment, but I also cannot promise there > won't be any more problems that need fixing found between now and the > package being checked in the NEW queue. And to reiterate: If Debian wants to be legally safe w.r.t. mpeg encoder patents, removing some mpeg encoders and not others -- when the others have been pointed out -- is really a bad idea. They should all be removed until the issue is settled one way or another. I see no way that leaving some in while excluding others for patent reasons is going to help Debian; if anything it can only make Debian's legal situation worse, because it can be used as evidence that Debian knew about the problems but left the patent-covered code in Debian. Which gets you the extra penalties for "wilful" infringement. Is there an objection, or shall I file a serious bug against ffmpeg?
