[Vm-dev] Official VM missing MPEGPlugin

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 17.01.2011, at 21:10, David T. Lewis wrote:

> 
> 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?

Squeak.org VMs have always included it and nobody ever complained about that. Until someone does I don't see a problem.

AFAIU hardware vendors like OLPC may have to pay royalties if they sell mp3-capable machines.

- Bert -