Mplayer issues [LWN.net]

Mplayer issues

Posted Jan 22, 2003 9:45 UTC (Wed) by erich (subscriber, #7127)
Parent article: GNU/Linux Media Player Roundup (LinuxOrbit)

The reason mplayer is not included in Debian is that it containes non-free code (although they are working heavily to get rid of that code afaik)
The other statments were true afaik:
Mplayer upstream said they did not want binary packages, because they aren't as optimized as they would like to... that changed when they managed reliable processor-detection.
Of course there have always been mplayer debian packages available in private repositories; so when the licencing issues are resolved the package will immedeately be uploaded in the pool - well tested.
I personally use mplayer a lot (because of its fast startup) but it definitely has some ugly issues. Like when resizing it somehow collides with sawfish, and they "battle" each other and resize the window until i quit mplayer... Ugly, not being able to resize the window sometimes... (seems to occur when mplayer tries to enforce a window aspect. mplayer is the only application i've seen that effect in ever)

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Mplayer issues

Posted Jan 22, 2003 10:55 UTC (Wed) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link]

MPlayer is 100% GPL since version 0.90pre1 released march 2002.

I suggest you visit www.mplayerhq.hu to download the most recent version 0.90pre3. This one resolves some window manager problems.

Mplayer issues

Posted Jan 22, 2003 11:08 UTC (Wed) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link]

Oops, I meant rc3 instead of pre3.

Mplayer issues

Posted Jan 22, 2003 16:57 UTC (Wed) by erich (subscriber, #7127) [Link]

There was some post this year to debian-devel claiming that there are still issues. Maybe not in mplayer source itself, but in some library used by mplayer: maybe not some software licencing issues, but some patent problems.
I hate these legal people... they manage to harm the users, but not to provide protection from their competitors... (RealNetworks seems to have recognised that it will loose against Microsoft taking over the video-streaming market...)

Looks like i'm running rc2, i hope the annoying windowmanager-issue is indeed solved in rc3.

Looking at the mailing lists, there apparently have been some ugly flamewars between mplayer people and a maintainer preparing debian packages... Someone compared that flamewar with Theo de Raat and DjB...

Mplayer issues

Posted Jan 23, 2003 4:47 UTC (Thu) by Strike (guest, #861) [Link]

MPlayer debs: http://marillat.free.fr

He (Christian Marillat, also does a lot of GNOME packages among some 100-odd other of his packages) hass been packaging them since (apparently) before they were even allowed to be packaged, so they work just fine (and there are even processor optimized versions as well).