<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >General</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Dependencies" HREF="chapter-dependencies.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="sect1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" ></TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="chapter-dependencies.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect1" ><H1 CLASS="sect1" ><A NAME="chapter-general" >2. General</A ></H1 ><DIV CLASS="qandaset" ><DL ><DT >2.1. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-media-player" >Is GStreamer a media player ?</A ></DT ><DT >2.2. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-why-c" > Why is GStreamer written in C ? Why not C++/Objective-C/... ? </A ></DT ><DT >2.3. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-applications" >What applications are available for GStreamer ?</A ></DT ><DT >2.4. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-licensing" > What are the exact licensing terms for GStreamer and its plugins ? </A ></DT ><DT >2.5. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-sound-server" >Is GStreamer a sound server ?</A ></DT ><DT >2.6. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-platforms" > Will GStreamer be available for platforms other than Unix ? </A ></DT ><DT >2.7. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-gnome" >What is GStreamer's relationship with the GNOME community ?</A ></DT ><DT >2.8. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-kde" >What is GStreamer's relationship with the KDE community ?</A ></DT ><DT >2.9. <A HREF="chapter-general.html#general-my-application" > I'm considering adding GStreamer output to my application... </A ></DT ></DL ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-media-player" ></A ><B >2.1. </B >Is GStreamer a media player ?</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > No, GStreamer is a development framework for creating applications like media players, video editors, streaming media broadcasters and so on. That said, very good media players can easily be built on top of GStreamer and we even include a simple yet functional media player with GStreamer, called gst-player. </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-why-c" ></A ><B >2.2. </B > Why is GStreamer written in C ? Why not C++/Objective-C/... ? </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > We like C. Aside from "personal preference", there are a number of technical reasons why C is nice in this project: <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >C is extremely portable.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >C is fast.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >It is easy to make language bindings for libraries written in C. </P ></LI ><LI ><P >The GObject object system provided by GLib implements objects in C, in a portable, powerful way. This library provides for introspection and runtime dynamic typing. It is a full OO system, but without the syntactic sugar. If you want sugar, take a look at <A HREF="http://www.5z.com/jirka/gob.html" TARGET="_top" >GOB</A >.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >Use of C integrates nicely with Gtk+ and GNOME. Some people like this a lot, but neither Gtk+ nor GNOME are required by GStreamer.</P ></LI ></UL > </P ><P > So, in closing, we like C. If you don't, that's fine; if you still want to help out on GStreamer, we always need more language binding people. And if not, don't bother us; we're working :-) </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-applications" ></A ><B >2.3. </B >What applications are available for GStreamer ?</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > GStreamer is still very early in its development, but already we see some really nice applications being developed in parallel with GStreamer. Both gst-player and gst-editor are very closely linked to GStreamer itself for obvious reasons. For a list of some of the more advanced projects, look at the list in our <A HREF="http://gstreamer.net/status/" TARGET="_top" >Status table</A >. </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-licensing" ></A ><B >2.4. </B > What are the exact licensing terms for GStreamer and its plugins ? </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > All of GStreamer, including our own plugin code, is licensed under the <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html" TARGET="_top" >GNU LGPL</A > license. Some of the libraries we use for some of the plugins are however under the GPL, which means that those plugins can not be used by a non-GPL-compatible application. </P ><P > As part of the GStreamer source download you find a file called license_README. That file contains information in the exact licensing terms of the libraries we use. As a general rule, GStreamer aims at using only LGPL or BSD licensed libraries if available and only use GPL or proprietary libraries where no good LGPL or BSD alternatives are available. </P ><P > From GStreamer 0.4.2 on, we implemented a license field for all of the plugins, and in the future we might have the application enforce a stricter policy (much like tainting in the kernel). </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-sound-server" ></A ><B >2.5. </B >Is GStreamer a sound server ?</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > No, GStreamer is not a soundserver. GStreamer does however have plugins supporting most of the major soundservers available today, including ESD, aRTSd, and to some extent Jack. Support for MAS is also planned. </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-platforms" ></A ><B >2.6. </B > Will GStreamer be available for platforms other than Unix ? </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > Depends. Our main target is the Unix platform. That said, interest has been expressed in porting GStreamer to other platforms and the GStreamer core team will gladly accept patches to accomplish this. Please refer to the <A HREF="http://gstreamer.net/status/?category=7" TARGET="_top" > platform support status table</A > </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-gnome" ></A ><B >2.7. </B >What is GStreamer's relationship with the GNOME community ?</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > While GStreamer is operated as an independent project, we do have a close relationship with the GNOME community. Many of our hackers consider themselves also to be members of the GNOME community. There are plans to make (some part of) GStreamer an official part of the development framework of GNOME. This does not exclude use of GStreamer by other communities at all, of course. </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-kde" ></A ><B >2.8. </B >What is GStreamer's relationship with the KDE community ?</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > The GStreamer community wants to have as good a relationship as possible with KDE, and we hope that someday KDE decides to adopt GStreamer as their multimedia API, just like the GNOME community plans on doing. There have been contacts from time to time between the GStreamer community and KDE and we do already have support for the aRTSd sound server used by KDE. Also, some of the KDE hackers have created Qt bindings of GStreamer and made a simple video player. </P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="qandaentry" ><DIV CLASS="question" ><P ><A NAME="general-my-application" ></A ><B >2.9. </B > I'm considering adding GStreamer output to my application... </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="answer" ><P ><B > </B > That doesn't really make sense. GStreamer is not a sound server, so you don't output directly to GStreamer, and it's not an intermediate API between audio data and different kinds of audio sinks. It is a fundamental design decision to use GStreamer in your app; there are no easy ways of somehow 'transfering' data from your app to GStreamer. Instead, your app would have to use or implement a number of GStreamer elements, string them together, and tell them to run. In that manner the data would all be internal to the GStreamer pipeline. </P ><P > That said, it is possible to write a plugin specific to your app that can get at the audio data. </P ></DIV ></DIV ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="chapter-dependencies.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Dependencies</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >