>>>>> "JL" == James \"Doc\" Livingston writes:
[...] JL> Things have since changed, and I've been informed that Redhat is JL> (pending final confirmation of legal advice) planning to drop JL> Rhythmbox from Fedora Core[1] and RHEL unless it is re-licenced JL> under something that allows linking to arbitrary GStreamer JL> plugins. Do you have a reference for this? I couldn't find any posts on any of the fedora-* mailing lists. I would be very surprised if Red Hat was planning to ship the Fluendo mp3 plugin with Fedora Core, since it would be specifically against their policy of a 100% open-source, patent-free software distribution: http://fedora.redhat.com/About/ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ However, they may want to make it compatible with arbitrary GStreamer plugins so that it can be easily ported to RHEL which doesn't have the requirement of being 100% open-source, patent-free software. Presumably this is their real goal, but it seems to be a case of the RHEL tail wagging the Fedora Core dog, because technically it doesn't conflict with the Fedora Core policy, but it seems to break with the spirit. This is because it effectively makes an upstream package have to choose between a license that makes it compatible with derivative distributions (i.e. RHEL being derivative of Fedora Core) that may wish to include proprietary plugins, or face being dropped from the Core distribution (and/or being "relegated" to Extras, which does have the perception of being in different status, regardless of how "equal" Core and Extras are supposed to be). JL> So this again brings up the three important questions: 1) Do we JL> want to change the licencing to something more permissive? 2) If JL> we want to, is is practical? 3) If we are, what should it be JL> re-licenced to? JL> The first question, is something the copyright holders need to JL> answer, and I'm sure they're will be plenty of options from them JL> and the wider community. That said, I'm fine with relicensing, although my contributions are probably small enough that they wouldn't require permission. JL> To re-licence we need the agreement of all copyright holders; if JL> someone refuses to give permission, or we can't get hold of JL> them[2], then we either rip out what they contributed or don't go JL> ahead with it. Could be tricky but not impossible. After all totem did it. How many contributors were involved in that relicensing? JL> Finally is the question of what to re-licence to. The minimum JL> change required that solves the primary reason for re-licencing JL> would be to keep the GPL, but add an exception for GStreamer JL> plugins. Other options include: also adding an exception for JL> Rhythmbox plugins, using the LGPL so that we could split bits into JL> libraries other application could use, etc. GPL + exception seems like the most straightforward option, and matches what totem does. How would it apply to plugins? Would all distributed plugins also have to be under the same exception? What about 3rd party plugins that somebody might write and make available on their website for including in ~/.gnome/rhythmbox/plugins. Alex _______________________________________________ rhythmbox-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/rhythmbox-devel
