[Psi-devel] plugins and stuff

[Justin Karneges]

On Monday 25 July 2005 09:22 pm, Damjan wrote:
> > Unfortunately, we can't really use pure GPL code in Psi,
>
> Why not? Isn't PSI GPL (with the exception allowing linking to
> commercial win32-QT - an exception no longer required).

The main reason now is audio/video.  So far there is no good free software for 
this kind of thing.  The best we have is Helix, which is open source, but not 
GPL-compatible.  There are also choices that are not open source whatsoever, 
such as the XTen SDK that I'll be using for the SAPO client.  By keeping Psi 
more liberal than the GPL, and by allowing linking with the commercial Qt, 
the door stays open for these GPL-incompatible streaming libraries.

I should note that we haven't added an exception for A/V stuff yet since Psi 
doesn't have an A/V plugin system.  However, the text that is prepended to 
the GPL in Psi's COPYING file already has exceptions for Qt plugins and QCA 
plugins, making it very easy to add future plugin exceptions.

There is also the issue of OpenSSL, which is not compatible with the GPL.  
Technically we have to use the commercial Qt to stay legal with OpenSSL on 
Windows.

-Justin