i have never been too clear about the politics and legality of win32codecs,
which I assume is the package you are referring to. It seems that on my
gentoo system win32codecs is a dependency for both mplayer and xine-lib,
although it may be on xine-lib that divx4linux is an alternative (i'm
not that good at reading the ebuild files)


On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 11:04:41 +1300
Mike Beattie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 09:51:57AM +1300, Nick Rout wrote:
> > i find mplayer gives better quality, plays more codecs and generally
> > "just goes". it will play weird video files that my media player in
> > windows barfs at. I can play 6 or more video files windowed on my
> > desktop at the same time. (if i want to)
> 
> A lot of folks miss one of the most discouraging facts about mplayer.. the
> authors are quite happy to completely disregard copyright law, and steal
> codec information, and whatever else from whatever source they can, and
> blatantly license it as GPL as if they wrote it.
> 
> Ok, it gives you a piece of software that appears to work.. but you are
> supporting their actions by using it.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'm no GPL-only bigot - I'll happily use non-free
> software when needed.. but I dislike using non-free software that's being
> distributed under the guise of GPL'd software.
> 
> (I use 'GPL' loosely here, I'm really meaning 'any free license')
> 
> Mike.
> -- 
> Mike Beattie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>                      ZL4TXK, IRLP Node 6184
> 
>          Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.

-- 
Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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