GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 513617
rhythmbox should have GPL exception
Last modified: 2008-10-01 19:30:35 UTC
rhythmbox is a GPL program. Totem has a GPL exception that allows the usage of such plugins. Refer here: http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/totem/trunk/license_change?revision=4301&view=markup Would it be possible for rhythmbox to also have such an exception added so it can be distributed on systems with GStreamer plugins that contain IP?
Any progress in this area? By the way, I understand that the Mozilla Songbird project uses GStreamer, and they have a totem-like extension in their licensing already. If rhythmbox can't improve their licensing, then it would make sense for Solaris to stop including rhythmbox and migrate to use Songbird, I think. Sun would prefer to be able to distribute the MP3 plugin with GStreamer, which we cannot do currently due to rhythmbox licensing. It would be better, though, if rhythmbox were able to fix its licensing and then we could ship both players. Thus avoiding disrupting the experience for users who are already using rhythmbox.
Sorry, I'd missed the ealier bugmail about this. We'd been talking about re-licensing for quite a while, but up until recently the big sticking point was dbus-glib which for us was effectively GPL'd (as the other license it's under wasn't compatible). Now that's MIT licensed,that our big issue out of the way. I'd been talking with Bastien recently, and we should hopefully have the re-licensing done soon, as all we'd need to do is check with everyone who has contributed since I last asked for people's approval for relicensing (and most of the contributers I asked last time, so it should be okay).
Great, I look forward to rhythmbox being relicensed!
Any update?
Looks like we've done it: http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/rhythmbox/trunk/shell/main.c?r1=5399&r2=5679 albeit slightly grammatically incorrectly.
Yay! What's wrong with the grammar. Perhaps you could provide a patch to show the error, and perhaps the grammar can be corrected.
Assuming "the Rhythmbox authors" is not a singular entity, it should say "The Rhythmbox authors hereby grant permission..". I'm pretty sure I don't care enough to change this in every source file, though.
find . -name .svn -prune -o -type f -exec perl -p -i -e 's|Rhythmbox authors hereby grants permission|Rhythmbox authors hereby grant permission|g' \{} \; Fixed in trunk. As I've mentioned before, I also think "non-GPL compatible" should be "GPL incompatible". But I think we can close this.