[Fedora-legal-list] Reasons for not including MPlayer in main repository?

[Stefan Parviainen]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 02:43:15PM +0400, Peter Lemenkov wrote:
> 2010/10/14 Stefan Parviainen <pafcu at 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.

-- 
Stefan Parviainen