G'day everyone, Back at the end of December Fluendo released their MP3 decoding plugin for GStreamer, the binary version of which is fully patent-licenced. A short time later Christian Schaller sent a post[0] to the rhythmbox-devel mailing list asking about the possibility of re-licencing Rhythmbox to include a exception for GStreamer plugins, similar to the one Totem has.
The reason for asking this was that they had received legal advice that anyone shipping both the binary MP3 plugin and GPL-licenced software that would use it (e.g. Rhythmbox) would be in violation of the GPL. Using them together is fine (e.g. if the user had downloaded it), but distributing them together isn't. There was a short discussion on the list, but it petered out because it became apparent that no-one was actually planning to ship the plugin at that time. Things have since changed, and I've been informed that Redhat is (pending final confirmation of legal advice) planning to drop Rhythmbox from Fedora Core[1] and RHEL unless it is re-licenced under something that allows linking to arbitrary GStreamer plugins. So this again brings up the three important questions: 1) Do we want to change the licencing to something more permissive? 2) If we want to, is is practical? 3) If we are, what should it be re-licenced to? The first question, is something the copyright holders need to answer, and I'm sure they're will be plenty of options from them and the wider community. To re-licence we need the agreement of all copyright holders; if someone refuses to give permission, or we can't get hold of them[2], then we either rip out what they contributed or don't go ahead with it. Finally is the question of what to re-licence to. The minimum change required that solves the primary reason for re-licencing would be to keep the GPL, but add an exception for GStreamer plugins. Other options include: also adding an exception for Rhythmbox plugins, using the LGPL so that we could split bits into libraries other application could use, etc. [0] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/2006-January/msg00005.html [1] if dropped from Core it would be in Extras, but obviously no longer their default music player. [2] Christian's mail noted that at least one former contributer is deceased, which makes getting permission somewhat more difficult. Cheers, James "Doc" Livingston -- (Not an April Fool's, but reality in this case...) -- MPW C error message _______________________________________________ rhythmbox-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/rhythmbox-devel
