On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 20:27 -0700, Alex Lancaster wrote: > >>>>> "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: <snip> > 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. <snip>
having Rhythmbox as the default music player in Fedora is pretty much a done deal. For RHEL however, it would require being able to plug non- free plugins, or at least non-GPL-compatible plugins. Obviously, having different players as the default in Fedora and RHEL would just make life harder for the maintainers. <snip> > 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? Christian handled all that for me, but Totem probably had less contributors of non-trivial code than Rhythmbox. If you start asking contributors of trivial code, you'll never see the end of it. > 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. Then again, it's pretty tricky here. I would say it's fair to assume that whatever license is chosen for Rhythmbox, the plugins would have a compatible license, and that further contributions could be expected to be of the same license as the core. GPL + exception is fine by me, for my (small amounts of) code. -- Bastien Nocera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "That Seaman is a handsome young man but he spends too much time looking in his mirror rather than at the ball. You can't keep goal with hair like that" - Brian Clough, on the pony-tailed former England goalkeeper David Seaman. _______________________________________________ rhythmbox-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/rhythmbox-devel
