Re: Intellectual Property Plugins and GNOME

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

>>> Perhaps Microsoft and Fluendo would find it interesting to work a
>>> license with the GNOME community
>>
>> Such a license would violate any of the ideals that we stand for.
>
> Ronald is correct, it would violate the Free as in Freedom.  However,
> you should be taking this to the distributions rather than the GNOME
> community itself.  Distributors and perhaps user's themselves could
> license it.

Is there a more appropriate forum for discussing a topic like this?

Apologies if my previous email was inappropriate.  I certainly do not
want to encourage the GNOME community to violate any important ideals.
Obviously one ideal that it wouldn't violate is giving our end-users
the best desktop experience possible.  It seems a bit hard to really
do this without finding and supporting creative ways to allow popular
desktop IP to integrate with the desktop.

But "allowing" IP to integrate doesn't mean that the GNOME community
needs to support it financially, obviously.

I just found it interesting that Fluendo seemed agreeable to the idea
that the GNOME community in general could work together to purchase
a single license for all users.  If there were enough interest to do
something like this, it would make the GNOME user experience more
exciting/modern, save money for everyone involved, and give access to
the IP to all GNOME users.

I just wanted to mention the idea and see if there might be interest.
From the responses, it seems like there isn't much.  But that is fine
since end users can go to the Fluendo store to purchase the plugins
directly if they want them.

> I had a whole rant about proprietary stuff, but you guys have
> probably heard it before. :-)

While I certainly understand it would be bad for the GNOME community
to support non-free projects at the expense of free projects, I didn't
think I was suggesting anything that would detract from free software.
If enough users/companies are willing to pony up the money to pay for
a license, then this isn't taking away from money earmarked for other
free projects.  In fact, the Foundation could reasonably insist that
some extra money to fund free projects would be required for them to
consider supporting a non-free project.  Also, it seems supporting
popular IP multimedia codecs would likely make free software more
popular rather than less.  Since the license must be renewed each year,
such an arrangement could be terminated in the future if people found
the arrangement didn't work well.

The unfortunate reality is that for a computer to be functional with
multimedia, it is necessary for some intellectual property to integrate
with the desktop.  Fluendo is already doing this, so to a degree
the need is being met.  Really the opportunity to work more closely
together only makes it more affordable for everyone.

Brian