Re: GNOME-media on the road to 2.4.0

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 03:59:41PM +0100, Brian Cameron wrote: 
> My understanding is that these concerns were highlighted during
> a conversation that the gstreamer team had with RMS.  While I
> understand that RMS may have a strict and convservative view
> of the GPL, his perspective probably does matter since he is the
> author of the license.  Havoc's perspective of the GPL seems
> consdierably more lax, but I don't know whose perspective is
> correct.

The more accurate view in my opinion is that the GPL covers plugins
only if the plugins are a derived work.

If there are well-defined preexisting interfaces, and an
independently-developed plugin that communicates only via those
interfaces, and the interfaces are generic rather than specific to the
plugin, I don't see how the plugin could be a derived work.

Ultimately everyone needs to get their own legal advice on this,
though. IANAL.

If the gstreamer team wants to make this completely
unambiguous/not-debatable, pursuing permission from copyright holders
to add an exception clause might be one approach.

Havoc