[Ffmpeg-devel] overall license review - adding proper license headers

[Diego Biurrun]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 03:35:14AM -0700, Michel Lespinasse wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 08:44:37PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 02:27:04PM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > > I think Michel's intention was a sort of dual license like this:
> > > 1. GPL
> > > 2. You may link the code into any program X provided that the code is
> > >    used as part of ffmpeg (and of course provided that program X can
> > >    legitimately link to ffmpeg).
> > > 
> > > This is much less permissive than licensing under LGPL but would still
> > > make it possible to enable the code when --enable-gpl is omitted,
> > > although it might be surprising and unintuitive to some users if they
> > > could not use the entire combined library under LGPL...
> > > 
> > > At least ask him if this is what he meant I think.
> 
> Yes, this is what I remember Fabrice asked me and what I agreed to.
> This is more permissive than straight GPL but less than LGPL.

OK

> > Your opinion sounds plausible, but this is just not good enough.  All
> > the statements we have from Michel say that the code is intended to be
> > GPL.  So unless he explicitly gives his OK to license this as LGPL,
> > we'll have to assume it's GPL.
> > 
> > Besides such a dual license is only bound to create a lot of
> > complication.  IMO it's preferable to just keep plain GPL in this case.
> 
> Well the dual license did not work out all that well IMHO, since it's at
> least the second time that we have to discuss it. If you want to go back
> to straight GPL, that's certainly fine with me. Otherwise please at least
> clarify things on your end so I dont get flamed every few years about
> the idiotic license statements :)

I'll ask you again, just in case: Are you willing to relicense the code
as LGPL?

Judging from what you have written so far the answer is probably no.  In
this case we should go back to plain GPL on that file IMO.  The situation
is confusing right now and we should do something about it.  Having a
mix of subtly different and slightly incompatible licenses is only going
to lead to trouble.

Diego