"Licensed" codecs

[Mark A. Hoover]

> Everytime I've seen a reponse like this, I've sat here and wondered why
> it's always assumed that RedHat has to provide these for free.  I think
> it would be a great product offering if RedHat could get together
> perhaps with the developers of products like mplayer, xine, or whatever
> and license the codecs for use with these programs.
>
> The problem is not that Red Hat would have to provide them for free.
> The problem is that the applications you mention are all licensed under
> the GPL, and that license is fairly stubbornly opposed to any additional
> restrictions beyond those it describes.

I'll give you this one, only if you can tell me what would prevent 
something like mPlayer being released GPL, and the codec plugin from being 
released as a seperate binary only package?  The copy of xmms I have right 
now comes as two seperate RPMs.  The xmms RPM package that contains the 
player and the xmms-mp3 mplugin RPM which I had to go and d/l elsewhere.