Re: [Muine] Re: GStreamer Relicensing

[Matthew Good <muine matt-good net>]

On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 14:41 -0800, Tamara wrote:
> I dislike using the GPL-with-a-clause. I'm not convinced that is the
> only way to legally play proprietary formats such as MP3. I emailed
> RMS to ask for his opinion (besides his obvious choice of not using
> non-free formats :-) but of course the guru is very busy.

Yeah, plugins seem to be one of those grey areas where figuring out how
the GPL applies is a little difficult.  Based on what I've been reading
lately on Planet GStreamer ( http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/planet/ )
they've been talking to the FSF and RMS to get their feedback on the
licensing.  You can read their overview of the licensing dilemma at
http://www.linuxrising.org/files/licensing.html

I guess the issue mainly relates to putting together distributions.  If
a distributor puts together the software in such a way that a GPL
application such as Muine would be linked with non-free GStreamer
plugins the owner of the GPL application might claim that this was a
violation.  I think because there's some question over whether this is a
valid interpretation of the GPL or not, GStreamer is suggesting that
authors add a clause like the one suggested to make it clear how they
will interpret this situation and clear any concerns for distributors
wanting to package the application.

-- 
Matthew Good <muine matt-good net>