Hi all,
I have an application that I would like to package, but it has a dependency on mplayer. It would, therefore, be nice to get a version of mplayer into the Fedora repositories.
I know the mplayer project has had some legal difficulties regarding the license previously, but these seem to have been solved some time ago (e.g. Debian includes a version on mplayer). Currently the project is released under GPLv2.
The main issue nowadays is probably patents. Apparently support for some formats can not be included without breaking some patents. Does anyone on this list have an idea which formats are problematic from the point of view of the Fedora project? Would removing support for these formats make it possible to include a stripped version of mplayer in the Fedora repositories? MPlayer is a fairly well known piece of software, has this problem been discussed somewhere before?
2010/10/14 Stefan Parviainen pafcu@iki.fi:
The main issue nowadays is probably patents. Apparently support for some formats can not be included without breaking some patents. Does anyone on this list have an idea which formats are problematic from the point of view of the Fedora project? Would removing support for these formats make it possible to include a stripped version of mplayer in the Fedora repositories?
Removal of "patented" codecs from mplayer renders it almost completely useless. I'd rather to stay with rpmfusion package.
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 02:43:15PM +0400, Peter Lemenkov wrote:
2010/10/14 Stefan Parviainen pafcu@iki.fi:
The main issue nowadays is probably patents. Apparently support for some formats can not be included without breaking some patents. Does anyone on this list have an idea which formats are problematic from the point of view of the Fedora project? Would removing support for these formats make it possible to include a stripped version of mplayer in the Fedora repositories?
Removal of "patented" codecs from mplayer renders it almost completely useless. I'd rather to stay with rpmfusion package.
Sure, "almost". I'd rather view free/unencumbered formats using software from the main repos. If you need support for other formats (I don't*) then you should use the rpmfusion version. But the question was not what "[you]'d rather" do, but what obstacles prevent mplayer from being included in Fedora proper.
*assuming Ogg Vorbis/Theora are considered patent-free.
On 10/14/2010 07:01 AM, Stefan Parviainen wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 02:43:15PM +0400, Peter Lemenkov wrote:
2010/10/14 Stefan Parviainen pafcu@iki.fi:
The main issue nowadays is probably patents. Apparently support for some formats can not be included without breaking some patents. Does anyone on this list have an idea which formats are problematic from the point of view of the Fedora project? Would removing support for these formats make it possible to include a stripped version of mplayer in the Fedora repositories?
Removal of "patented" codecs from mplayer renders it almost completely useless. I'd rather to stay with rpmfusion package.
Sure, "almost". I'd rather view free/unencumbered formats using software from the main repos. If you need support for other formats (I don't*) then you should use the rpmfusion version. But the question was not what "[you]'d rather" do, but what obstacles prevent mplayer from being included in Fedora proper.
*assuming Ogg Vorbis/Theora are considered patent-free.
I cannot provide you a list of formats that are problematic.
The problem with mplayer is that it is structured in such a way that is not modular, at least not in a way that we could in Fedora package support for known safe formats, such as Ogg Vorbis/Theora, without conflicting with an rpmfusion package that contains potentially problematic formats.
~spot
On Thursday, October 14, 2010 05:49:53 pm Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
I cannot provide you a list of formats that are problematic.
The problem with mplayer is that it is structured in such a way that is not modular, at least not in a way that we could in Fedora package support for known safe formats, such as Ogg Vorbis/Theora, without conflicting with an rpmfusion package that contains potentially problematic formats.
Why exactly would it be a problem to conflict with the rpmfusion package (honest question)? Also, could the rpmfusion people not simply give their package a higher priority than the one in the Fedora repos? IIRC this is how Debian does it.
I'm interested in packaging a stripped version of mplayer, but I feel it would be a waste of time if any package is refused due to legal reasons anyway. I would, therefore, feel more comfortable if any legal issues could be resolved before I start work on packaging. If a list of "bad" formats can not be given, how about a list of "known good" ones? At least the ones currently included in GStreamer should be OK, right?
On 10/14/2010 03:30 PM, Stefan Parviainen wrote:
On Thursday, October 14, 2010 05:49:53 pm Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
I cannot provide you a list of formats that are problematic.
The problem with mplayer is that it is structured in such a way that is not modular, at least not in a way that we could in Fedora package support for known safe formats, such as Ogg Vorbis/Theora, without conflicting with an rpmfusion package that contains potentially problematic formats.
Why exactly would it be a problem to conflict with the rpmfusion package (honest question)? Also, could the rpmfusion people not simply give their package a higher priority than the one in the Fedora repos? IIRC this is how Debian does it.
Conflicts cause unnecessary confusion for end-users, and it is a rule established by rpmfusion. Playing games with package priority simply leads to confusion as versions change and causes end user expectations to not be met.
I'm interested in packaging a stripped version of mplayer, but I feel it would be a waste of time if any package is refused due to legal reasons anyway. I would, therefore, feel more comfortable if any legal issues could be resolved before I start work on packaging. If a list of "bad" formats can not be given, how about a list of "known good" ones? At least the ones currently included in GStreamer should be OK, right?
Given that mplayer is already available in rpmfusion, I do not think there is any merit in packaging a stripped version in Fedora, as it would cause a conflict with rpmfusion.
I would argue that your energy might be better spent on properly modularizing the codec support in mplayer, but having dealt with that upstream in the past, I suspect your energy might be better spent not working on mplayer at all.
~spot
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
Given that mplayer is already available in rpmfusion, I do not think there is any merit in packaging a stripped version in Fedora, as it would cause a conflict with rpmfusion.
I would argue that your energy might be better spent on properly modularizing the codec support in mplayer, but having dealt with that upstream in the past, I suspect your energy might be better spent not working on mplayer at all.
These might be true. However there is no policy in Fedora to prohibit packaging a legally acceptable version of mplayer.
Stefan asks the question "How?" but you are giving an advise by answering the question "Should I?" or "Is it worth?". I am sure that if Stefan needed this advise he would have asked for it.
So... "How?"
Orcan
On 10/14/2010 04:35 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
Given that mplayer is already available in rpmfusion, I do not think there is any merit in packaging a stripped version in Fedora, as it would cause a conflict with rpmfusion.
I would argue that your energy might be better spent on properly modularizing the codec support in mplayer, but having dealt with that upstream in the past, I suspect your energy might be better spent not working on mplayer at all.
These might be true. However there is no policy in Fedora to prohibit packaging a legally acceptable version of mplayer.
Stefan asks the question "How?" but you are giving an advise by answering the question "Should I?" or "Is it worth?". I am sure that if Stefan needed this advise he would have asked for it.
So... "How?"
Assuming that an mplayer package was generated that did not conflict with the rpmfusion mplayer packages, I would be willing to audit it.
Unfortunately, I cannot say "take these codecs out" or "take these files out". I can't even say that upon doing the audit, to be fair. The best I could say is that "yes, this is okay for Fedora as-is" or "no, it is not". I realize how frustrating that is, which is why I am trying very hard to discourage this course of action.
The maintainer would need to completely remove the source code for problematic codecs and functionality from the tarball, as it cannot appear in the source package at all. This would essentially make this version a fork of mplayer, which would be an additional burden on the maintainer that he/she should be prepared to accept in advance.
Using the items which exist in Fedora in gstreamer would be a useful place to start, when trying to determine what is acceptable and what is not.
For the TLDR folks: This is a bad idea.
~spot
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 04:53:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
Given that mplayer is already available in rpmfusion, I do not think there is any merit in packaging a stripped version in Fedora, as it would cause a conflict with rpmfusion.
I find it curious that you are activly discouraging making "freer" versions of software, and instead encourage the use of 3rd-party repositories containing restricted software.
In addition to not having mplayer in the main repositories this also makes it impossible to include software that depends on mplayer in the main repos.
Since there seems to be so much opposition to my idea I will just have to skip Fedora as a supported platform for my software (no, telling people to install dependencies from some "random" 3rd party source is not a good solution for me).
On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 2:06 AM, Stefan Parviainen pafcu@iki.fi wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 04:53:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
Given that mplayer is already available in rpmfusion, I do not think there is any merit in packaging a stripped version in Fedora, as it would cause a conflict with rpmfusion.
I find it curious that you are activly discouraging making "freer" versions of software, and instead encourage the use of 3rd-party repositories containing restricted software.
He's saying that to make a free version of mplayer renders the software unmaintainable. This is not an unreasonable position to take.
In addition to not having mplayer in the main repositories this also makes it impossible to include software that depends on mplayer in the main repos.
Yes, it does, and that's unfortunate.
Since there seems to be so much opposition to my idea I will just have to skip Fedora as a supported platform for my software (no, telling people to install dependencies from some "random" 3rd party source is not a good solution for me).
RPMFusion is far from "some 'random' 3rd party source". Many bona fide Fedora maintainers work on RPMFusion. Is there any reason you can't contribute your software through RPMFusion?
Here's how you can get involved: http://rpmfusion.org/Contributors
-- Chris
On 10/15/2010 03:06 AM, Stefan Parviainen wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 04:53:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
Given that mplayer is already available in rpmfusion, I do not think there is any merit in packaging a stripped version in Fedora, as it would cause a conflict with rpmfusion.
I find it curious that you are activly discouraging making "freer" versions of software, and instead encourage the use of 3rd-party repositories containing restricted software.
In addition to not having mplayer in the main repositories this also makes it impossible to include software that depends on mplayer in the main repos.
Since there seems to be so much opposition to my idea I will just have to skip Fedora as a supported platform for my software (no, telling people to install dependencies from some "random" 3rd party source is not a good solution for me).
Have you considered using a sane framework like gstreamer, as opposed to a monolithic clump like mplayer?
~spot
-
Christofer C. Bell -
Orcan Ogetbil -
Peter Lemenkov -
Stefan Parviainen -
Tom Callaway