Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox and our new MP3 plugin
- From: William Jon McCann <mccann jhu edu>
- To: Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <christian fluendo com>
- Cc: rhythmbox-devel gnome org
- Subject: Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox and our new MP3 plugin
- Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 07:43:20 -0500
Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 18:48 -0500, William Jon McCann wrote:
Is there currently a distributor who is shipping Totem (or other
software with a similar exception) with a GPL incompatible plugin? Is
there a distributor who has specific plans to ship Rhythmbox with a GPL
incompatible plugin?
Well, Novell didn't write Banshee under the MIT license just cause they
didn't know what to spend money on :) Miguel also mentioned this in a
blog recently. I know there are similar processes going on at many of
the other distributions (ie. looking into adding support for non-free
formats), but that is not for me to disclose any details on. Currently
in the context of GStreamer that means Totem and Banshee as the shipable
media players. Personally I would like to see RB being a possibility as
it has a lot of nice features currently (love the DAAP support) and it
also gives the non-mono distributions a great option.
Interesting, Banshee is licensed under the MIT license and links to GPL
code.
I have seen some other developers refer to pragmatism in this
discussion. From my point of view, for this to apply there should
really be a commitment from a major vendor that intends on shipping
Rhythmbox as the primary player along with proprietary plugins. I
seriously doubt that Novell will ditch Banshee at this point. Will Red
Hat ship this plugin? Ubuntu?
Strictly speaking, I think this will make Rhythmbox GPL incompatible.
This means that we can't link to any GPL code unless it carries a
similar exception or it has a more permissive license (eg. LGPL). If
not, why?
It will not make you GPL incompatible (in the same way the LGPL isn't
GPL incompatible) as you are not adding an extra restriction beyond the
terms of the GPL. However if you do link to GPL code the value of this
clause is of course nill.
It seems to me that with this exception we can't link to, add, or derive
from any GPL code.
It is a slippery slope that for many has led to the abandonment of the
GPL altogether.
Jon
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