Re: [Muine] Adding a clause to Muine's license

[Jorn Baayen <jbaayen gnome org>]

On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 13:57 -0500, Matthew Good wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 19:23 +0100, Jorn Baayen wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > If we want to legally support proprietary audio formats through
> > GStreamer in Muine, we need to do something about our license (currently
> > plain GPL). See http://www.linuxrising.org/files/licensing.html.
> > 
> > I propose to add a clause to the current GPL license, something along
> > the lines of:
> > 'The Muine project hereby grant permission for non-GPL compatible
> > GStreamer plugins to be used and distributed together with GStreamer and
> > Muine. This permission are above and beyond the permissions granted by
> > the GPL license Muine is covered by.'
> 
> Should that be "This permission _is_ ..."?

That's right ;)

> > Are people OK with this?
> 
> Well, I don't have a particular problem with it if there is sufficient
> reason for Muine to do so.  I can see the advantage for applications
> like Totem since there seem to be more non-free video codecs in wide use
> (Quicktime, WM9, Real, etc.).  What audio formats would this enable
> Muine to use that would previously have been unavailable?  I guess WMA
> would fall in that category (though I don't use it).  I'm not quite sure
> what the legal situation is with AAC due to the MPEG-4 licensing.  FAAD
> is GPL, but apparently there are problems binaries of it.  
> 
> So, I guess since the permission is restricted to GStreamer I don't
> think it would be a big deal, though I would be interested to know what
> we'd be getting by making this allowance.

WMA definetely, but I don't know about the legal situation around AAC
either. But I think WMA in itself should be reason enough- it is wildly
popular.

Jorn