Re: GNOME-media on the road to 2.4.0

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

> Well, along with the rest of the desktop GNOME-media is headed in the
> direction of 2.4.0.  I've been trying to pay as much attention to
> bugzilla as possible, but there may have been a few bugs that slipped
> through the cracks.  Is there any bugs that anyone knows about that
> should be fixed before 2.4.0?

One important issue relates to the licenses of the various GNOME
multimedia players.

All GNOME media players (totem, nautilus-media, gnome-sound-recorder,
etc.) are GPL'ed applications.  These applications link in the
gstreamer infrastructure to handle the recording/playback of audio
and video.  gstreamer and most of the gstreamer plugins are LGPL.

The gstreamer team explained to me that the license of GPL'ed
players do not allow using plugins that carry license restrictions
(such as mp3, QuickTime, RealMedia, etc.).

So, even though gstreamer and gst-plugins are LGPL'ed.  We cannot
actually use plugins that carry license restrictions in players that
are GPL'ed (such as all GNOME's current media players).

Their thinking is based on clause 7 of the GPL:

  For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free 
  redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies 
  directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could 
  satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely 
  from distribution of the Program. 

Is there any plans to change the license terms of the various GNOME
media players so that they can support playing formats like mp3,
QuickTime, RealMedia, etc. (all formats that are supported with
gstreamer plugins).  In other words, if a company pays the royalty
fees to allow mp3 playing, it would be nice if we could actually
legally use mp3 with GNOME's various media players.

Brian