GStreamer licensing policy and advisory

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller]

Hi GNOME and KDE multimedia developers.

After some emails back and forth with Richard Stallman I have written
down a licensing policy document which eventually will be put onto the
GStreamer website and into the GStreamer Application Developers Guide.

The document explains GStreamer's licensing policy in regards to
plugins, but maybe more important for people on these lists it contains
an advisory on licensing choice for application developers.

I am sending this mail here to get feedback both on the general content
of the advisory and some reactions from developers of applications using
GStreamer as the advisory is largely targeted at them.

Sent the document to the GStreamer devel list a few days ago and have
not gotten any negative feedback yet, either on list or on. But it might
of course still be changes coming due to feedback from my fellow
GStreamer hackers.

You find the current draft here:
http://www.linuxrising.org/files/licensing.html

I would like to point out that the license interpretation statement
linked to from the advisory is very preliminary. I have not had a lawyer
read through it yet to verify its content for correctness. It is based
upon a suggestion from Lawrence Rosen and a similar document he did for
the jboss group. My plan is to both send the finished statement to Rosen
in the hope he would be willing to review it, but I will also try to
send it to the Debian Legal list for input in the hope for finding
people with the right knowledge to give me feedback. If there are anyone
on these lists reading it who are knowledgeable in copyright law and can
give me input I would love to have it.

General political and practical feedback on both advisory and statement
is of course also welcome.

Christian