xine-lib: splitting off patented stuff

[Till Varoquaux]

On 12/12/05, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi Sebastian!
>
> Sebastian Dröge [2005-12-11 15:14 +0100]:
> > I have to disagree in the case of ffmpeg. IMHO it's currently better to
> > ship a copy of ffmpeg with every package using it to always have a
> > working version with that package. Because of their API instabilities we
> > had enough problems in the past and already have one again with
> > transcode.
>
> Hm, does upstream know about this problem? Did somebody teach them
> what a SONAME is for?
>
> Static copies are a real pain; fixing a bug of a security vuln in
> ffmpeg would mean to update n packages, and, e. g. I don't even know
> *which* packages to change.
Ffmpeg is to blame: they have no api stability and don't care about
realeasing dixed versions. It is standard for the applications to get
a snapshot and integrate it in their sources... They can't do more
than this....
>
> > But nonetheless this would mean a main xine-lib package with less
> > codecs than now and a multiverse one with the missing parts (and
> > some more as we have some optional libraries which are needed for
> > some plugins in multiverse)
>
> Right, wasn't that the primary idea of the split in the first place?
The ideal solutions would be to use dlopen thus allowing you to
install only the codecs you want...
Still this would be a pain to maintain. Maybe this should be suggested
to the xine team?

Till