Re: [Savannah-register-public] [task #8406] Submission of MplayerGS

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 07:09:35PM +0300, Yavor Doganov wrote:
> Sylvain Beucler wrote:
> > 
> > > I'll post the proforma reply here for your approval.
> > 
> > Please do.
> 
> First, the main issue -- we do not recommend MPlayer, because at least
> in the past it used to include some non-free codecs.  AFAICT, judging
> by the Debian mplayer package, the only parts which are removed are
> mencoder and dvdcss, which are free software but there are patent
> concerns.  There are still binary codecs available to download from
> their website, which is enough reason not to recommend it.
> 
> I'm not sure if this rules out MPlayer as dependency.

I don't think so.

- patents: usually we don't (well, can't :)) check them unless there's
  a specific action from the FSF (e.g. gifs a couple years ago) and
  when they concern the hosted source code (rather than dependencise)

- DMCA (DeCSS): essentially the same

- dependency recommends proprietary software: that's sad, but mplayer
  isn't an isolated case. The main point is that the project can be
  used in a 100% free OS. 

> Provided that MPlayer is not a problem, here is the response I intend
> to send:
> 
> * * *
> 
> I am reviewing your project -- sorry for the delay.
> There are some inconsistencies:
> 
>   * Please remove all statements "All rights reserved." -- they are
>     incompatible with the GPL and in general contradict with any free
>     software license.

That would be nice, though I checked with address@hidden the other
day, and as long as there is also a GPL standard notice, "all rights
reserved" is not a problem. So this isn't mandatory.

>   * The preferred copyright notice for GPLv3 has changed slightly --
>     please see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html or the file
>     COPYING in your tarball.
>   * Please include a short README with a copyright notice in Resources
>     for the images and the .gorm files.  See
>     http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html
>     for details.  (BTW, some of the images are executable -- perhaps a
>     mistake.)
>   * In MplayerGSInfo.plist the copyright year is 2003; since this is
>     what the users will see in the Info dialog, please include all
>     years as appropriate, separated by commas.  See the above URL for
>     details.
> 
> Would you be willing to correct these small problems and give us the
> URL to an updated tarball?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> P.S.  Unrelated to the project registration, but I find it worth
> mentioning.  Your package does not work on gNewSense 2.0 -- it builds
> fine but NSException is thrown when loading the .gorms.  IIRC this is
> because they were edited with a modern version of Gorm which depends
> on GNUstep GUI 0.14.  You might want to include (in README, for
> example) the minimal Base/GUI versions required; this would be very
> helpful to your users.

The rest looks good :)

-- 
Sylvain