Re: GNOME-media on the road to 2.4.0

[iain <iain prettypeople org>]

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

> 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.

The gstreamer based apps don't link to any dodgy libraries themselves.

They might dlopen them once they're running, but if you don't have a
patent encumbered library/plugin installed then it won't be opened. And
that would imply that the distribution of these players isn't breaking
any patents, its the distribution of the actual mp3/whatever plugins
that might.

Surely?

iain
-- 
"Miss Celine Dion sings lovesongs while our cities burn"