Re: legal issues on media codecs (was Re: very rough pre-gep tentative new modules list)

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

GStreamers code is all LGPL. However we have many plugins based on GPL
libs, this includes all our DVD playback stuff for instance.
After discussing the issue with RMS we have decided to 

a) add a license field to each plugin that when viewed with gst-inspect
will show you  the effective license of that plugin.

b) we will set up a system where an application have to tell gstreamer
that it is GPL compatible or it will not be able to load the
functionality the plugins using GPL libraries provide.

This means plugins can be under any license the author wants.

Also allowing the dropping in of codecs is part of the GStreamer design
where one plugin can supply the format and one plugin can support the
codec x and yet another can supply codec y. GStreamer will the autoplug
a pipeline using these different plugins to try and get all it needs to
playback the file it has been given.

Just face it boys and girls, GStreamer is the best thing since the
discovery of fire :)

Christian

On Tue, 2002-09-17 at 17:04, Havoc Pennington wrote:
<SNIP> 
> A possible answer is to have a pluggable media system, where various
> codecs can be dropped in, and ship only unencumbered codecs such as
> ogg ourselves. If the plugin system is compatible with non-GPL plugins
> (say an X/BSD-style license plugin), then people could license the mp3
> patent and then include an mp3 plugin, for example, at some point in
> the future.  If the plugin system requires plugins to be GPL, then
> patent licenses are impossible - which may be a policy decision we
> want to make, but I'm not sure it makes sense. Or another alternative
> might be to allow GPL only but have an exception for codec patent
> licenses.
> 
> Havoc
> 
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