Re: [Libcdio-devel] GPLv3?

[Karl Berry]

    Huh?

All I knew about libcdio's potential license update was what was in the
thread and what Rocky had told me.  I hadn't seen mplayer mentioned
before this.

    - MPlayer is GPL-v2 only and uses libcdio

According to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/index.html,
mplayer is GPLv2 or later.  And while I did not check every one of the
1100+ source files, the ones I checked all were GPLv2+.

Why do you say it is GPLv2 only?  Have the mplayer developers made an
announcement somewhere that it is released under GPLv2-only, not GPLv2
or later?

Aside from mplayer, are any of the other libcdio-using programs under
GPLv2 only?  (Aside from the question of importing code from mplayer.)
I did not find any in the list that Rocky gave me.

    Looks like a deadlock situation :(

No, it is not a deadlock.  For one thing, mplayer recommends and makes
available a ton of nonfree software (in its plugins), so we can't use it
or recommend it in GNU.  So whether it can use GNU software or not is
hardly something that will block us from upgrading libcdio's license
forever, even if it is under GPLv2-only.

I'm not saying we need to hastily update the libcdio license and
unnecessarily antagonize other developers, but it's not a "deadlock".

    or the FSF (for making a GPL-license incompatible with it's predecessor)

You write as if it were a mere oversight that it isn't compatible.  It
was fundamentally impossible to do that (unfortunately).  rms would have
made it compatible if there was a way to do so.  See the beginning of
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html.

    Therefore IMO GPL-v2+ is the only option for libcdio.

That is certainly not the case.  There is always a choice.  Each choice
has consequences, for sure.

    because AFAIK dynamic loading requires licenses to be compatible

This blanket statement is not correct.  It depends on the details of how
the plugins operate.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins (and subsequent
questions, depending on whether the base program or the plugin are
GPL'd/nonfree).

Best,
Karl