I've added licensing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to this distribution, so that the right folks at RealNetworks are aware of this discussion and can more easily participate. Normally, that list requires subscription to send mail to it, but I've taken that restriction off for the time being.
More inline:
Ronald Bultje wrote:
Hi,
[added CC to gstreamer-devel]
On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 19:28, Lee Braiden wrote:
This might be a bit provocational (sorry), but I'm wondering why you don't work with the gstreamer folks, and just make codecs or bugfix the ui? That would make helix a MUCH better opensource project, imho.
Being one of the GStreamer developers, I'd like to advocate this point too. Given the current license of the (closed-source) Real codecs included in Helix, it's hard for us to add proper Real support to the default Gnome media framework. If you guys are looking for true integration in the Gnome desktop, GStreamer is the way to go. We already provide Gtk+/Gnome video widgets, integration in the file manager, etc.
We're looking for integration into GNOME, but we're also looking at producing a world-class, *cross-platform* multimedia system, and we've got to focus on the one we've got (Helix). While it's theoretically possible to port GStreamer to Windows, Mac OS, and Symbian (for example), it's *done* for Helix.
If we allow our codecs to be used by other multimedia frameworks, we're just encouraging more splintering -- for Linux developers would work on improving GStreamer (improving the experience only for Linux users) rather than work on Helix (improving the experience for everyone). Besides that, we would have to convince Intel, Sony, VoiceAge and many others that this is a great idea, since much of what is in RealAudio and RealVideo is licensed from them. While it would be extremely generous for us to do this, there's not much of a business case for RealNetworks to institute such a giveaway.
We may just be at an impasse here, because years of work have gone into GStreamer and Helix, and neither group is going to drop years of work to move to another platform. However, I find it very difficult to believe that any commercial Linux distributor in the United States is going to be able to ship anything that is simultaneously legal and useful based on what is in GStreamer today.
Rob
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