[Vm-dev] Official VM missing MPEGPlugin

[David T. Lewis]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 01:40:15PM -0500, Matthew Fulmer wrote:
>  
> On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 12:14:56PM -0500, David T. Lewis wrote:
> > >   http://cobalt.cs.duke.edu/pub/alien.mpeg
> > 
> > FYI, access is denied to this file:
> > 
> >   Forbidden
> >   
> >   You don't have permission to access /pub/alien.mpeg on this server.
> >   Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at cobalt.cs.duke.edu Port 80
> 
> fixed
> 
> -- 
> Matthew Fulmer (a.k.a. Tapple)

Thanks.

To follow up on the original question: I looked into the issue on
the unix VM, and it turns out there are problems in the CMake
configuration script, which is excluding the actual Mpeg3Plugin.c
file from the build (hence the plugin "loads" but no actual
primitives are present), and which also enables pthreads in the
plugin (which leads to crashes for reasons that as far as I know
have never been diagnosed).

I sent a patch for the configuration to Ian, but it's enough
of a hack that I won't embarrass myself further by posting it
here. Turns out Ian is in Kyoto at the moment, so he'll probably
have a look at it in a week or so.

Meanwhile, a question for Bert concerning the MPEG plugin:

Ian mentioned that "the MPEG plugin was removed from the standard
Linux distribution because of licensing issues.  OLPC/RedHat would
not take the VM with it included."

So - is it OK to include the MPEG plugin as an external plugin in
the standard binary VM distributions?

Thanks,
Dave