Re: GNOME-media on the road to 2.4.0

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Wed, 2003-08-13 at 13:09, Brian Cameron wrote:
> 
> > 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.

I got a different bell sound from some lawyers.

-- 
/Bastien Nocera
http://hadess.net

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Segmentation fault