"Licensed" codecs
Thomas Dodd
ted at cypress.com
Tue Sep 23 14:33:53 UTC 2003
Alan Cox wrote:
>>I'll give you this one, only if you can tell me what would prevent
>>something like mPlayer being released GPL, and the codec plugin from being
>>released as a seperate binary only package? The copy of xmms I have right
>>now comes as two seperate RPMs. The xmms RPM package that contains the
>>player and the xmms-mp3 mplugin RPM which I had to go and d/l elsewhere.
>
>
> For GPL software the GPL prevents it. For BSD type licenses you can probably
> do that just fine providing you have the relevant licenses
I beleive that to be a bug in the GPL. (or a reason to use a different
license if that is the true intent)
Plugins and addons should not be considered derivitives automatically.
If I write a "pluging" for the GIMP, that mimics the functionality of a
comercial Photoshop plugin, why woul it be a derivitive of the GIMP? Now
If I modified an existin, GPLed, GIMP plugin, that would have to be GPL.
If I write a new plugin from scratch, using the defined plugin
interface, that should not have to be GPL.
Same with xmms plugins, and kernel modules. Use a defined interface to
implement functionality, and it should not force the GPL on the new
functionality.
-Thomas
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