Why does amarok depend on ASF/MP4 support?

[Jeff Mitchell]

Maciej Mrozowski wrote:
> On Wednesday 30 of September 2009 14:07:27 Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> 
>> So I take it that the next taglib release will remove the option or at
>> least make it on by default? Or is that something that can't be changed
>> anymore?

Dunno.

> I really don't see any technical difficulties with them being disabled by 
> default. My major concert is:

It's not, other than removing (by default) functionality that's been in
Amarok for years. When push comes to shove, it's a lot easier for us to
require asf/mp4 to be built into TagLib than to answer a bazillion
questions about why a user's files aren't being read into Amarok,
especially when it worked with the previous version. (You'd be
surprised...users really would think this an Amarok bug, not a distro
regression.)

> Distro packagers are responsible for reading README's, checking licenses and 
> what's the most important - reading buildsystem options. Therefore I don't see 
> the point in disabling those features by default just because 'most distros' 
> aren't allowed to ship such lib - because those distros should disable it for 
> their own.

Agreed. And in fact, I don't know any distros at all that aren't allowed
to ship it.

> The problem may be, that this licensing issue has not been clarified enough in 
> README's and such. In my opinion enabling as default and showing cmake warning 
> that ASF/MP4 support is governed by separate (for instance GPL-incompatible) 
> license should make packagers and/or users building taglib from source aware 
> enough.

Except that it's not governed by a separate license. There is no license
or patent difference between that code and any of the other code in TagLib.

--Jeff

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