Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox and our new MP3 plugin

[William Jon McCann <mccann jhu edu>]

Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 18:48 -0500, William Jon McCann wrote:
> > Is there currently a distributor who is shipping Totem (or other 
> > software with a similar exception) with a GPL incompatible plugin?  Is 
> > there a distributor who has specific plans to ship Rhythmbox with a GPL 
> > incompatible plugin?
>
> Well, Novell didn't write Banshee under the MIT license just cause they
> didn't know what to spend money on :) Miguel also mentioned this in a
> blog recently. I know there are similar processes going on at many of
> the other distributions (ie. looking into adding support for non-free
> formats), but that is not for me to disclose any details on. Currently
> in the context of GStreamer that means Totem and Banshee as the shipable
> media players. Personally I would like to see RB being a possibility as
> it has a lot of nice features currently (love the DAAP support) and it
> also gives the non-mono distributions a great option.

Interesting, Banshee is licensed under the MIT license and links to GPL 
code.

I have seen some other developers refer to pragmatism in this 
discussion.  From my point of view, for this to apply there should 
really be a commitment from a major vendor that intends on shipping 
Rhythmbox as the primary player along with proprietary plugins.  I 
seriously doubt that Novell will ditch Banshee at this point.  Will Red 
Hat ship this plugin?  Ubuntu?

> > Strictly speaking, I think this will make Rhythmbox GPL incompatible. 
> > This means that we can't link to any GPL code unless it carries a 
> > similar exception or it has a more permissive license (eg. LGPL).  If 
> > not, why?
>
> It will not make you GPL incompatible (in the same way the LGPL isn't
> GPL incompatible) as you are not adding an extra restriction beyond the
> terms of the GPL. However if you do link to GPL code the value of this
> clause is of course nill. 

It seems to me that with this exception we can't link to, add, or derive 
from any GPL code.

It is a slippery slope that for many has led to the abandonment of the 
GPL altogether.

Jon