Re: GtkMediaPlayer widget

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas apestaart org>]

> I could turn this around and say "My only concern is with the repetitive 
> nature of gstreamer's work, when helix is already a cross-platform, 
> client/producer/server solution. Is there some fundamental problem with 
> Helix that prevents linux from using it?"

You could in fact turn this around, but then you would get a logical
answer like "Because GStreamer was out there and open before Helix".  At
the time when GStreamer was started there was no *open* project out
there that the developers knew of with as similar design and scope.

Note that "open" is pretty important here.  I don't know the history of
Helix, but basically, either Helix already existed in-house at Real as a
closed project, in which case it wasn't a viable solution at the time. 
Or, Helix was started from the ground up as an open project, in which
case it started some two years AFTER GStreamer, and then you can't
really turn around the question.  I don't know which of the two is true,
probably a mix of both.  In any case, I'm sure Real knew about GStreamer
before Helix was opened up, as has been suggested to us when Real wanted
to employ a GStreamer hacker to work on Helix.

As for question two, "Is there some fundamental problem with Helix that
prevents linux from using it", not really.  Some people will have
objections because they thought RealPlayer on Linux used to be ass. 
You'll convince them otherwise if you do the job right. What seems
pretty certain though is that *the license* of Helix seems to be
unacceptable for GNOME since GNOME is LGPL.  Don't quote me on this but
ask others more in the know.  I don't want to argue that on these lists,
and I don't care much beyond that. 

 It's Real's job to discuss the license either internally or externally
if it wants to be acceptable for GNOME.  As other hackers here have
said; "Fix the license so GNOME has a shot of using it.  Until then, we
can't."

Thomas