[FFmpeg-devel] Relicensing filters and general approach to crowd funding

[Robert Krüger]

Hi
On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at>wrote:

> Hi
>
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 01:57:38PM +0100, Robert Krüger wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Roger Pack <rogerdpack2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >> First of all, would someone be willing and able to find a price that
> > >> would make the copyright holders agree to relicensing? If none of the
> > >> developers would like to that, would it be considered appropriate if I
> > >> wrote to the (according to the source I think 5) copyright holders to
> > >> ask them?
> > >
> > > Maybe you could ask the developers if they'd be ok if you relicensed
> > > it to LGPL? Or maybe you've already tried that?
> > No, I haven't because I think the value of the particular filters is
> > significant and I simply didn't dare to ask them to give them away
> > since I am asking because I want to use the filters in a product and
> > therefore I am willing to and think it is fair to pay for relicensing.
> > In this case I just think more people (like you obviously) would pay a
> > bit for this to happen and this could be a good opportunity for the
> > project to gather money.
> >
> > Since nobody else reacted, I will probably write to the copyright
> > holders myself and ask them, what fair conditions would be for a
> > relicensing and then either pay or attempt to raise the requested
> > money if a price is agreed upon. We will see.
> >
> > >
> > > Anyway I'd be willing to pitch in a few bucks :)
> >
> > Good to know :-). I'll let you know if anything happens on this front.
>
> There is a company that offers 7k Euro to get yadif relicensed to LGPL
> if someone wants to add more to this, thats is surely not unwelcome
>
my company will add another 1,5k if it gets relicensed. Are you interested
in pursuing a crown funding approach using one of the big platforms to
raise more money (would require a financial goal to be defined and, of
course, they charge a percentage of the money) or do you just want to wait
who else is going to throw in some money if asked on the list?


> but whats mainly missing ATM is
> a list of copyright holders of yadif who need to agree
> someone contacting them
> an agreement on how to split the money up
>
> Iam a bit busy to do this myself atm, also i dont want to be the one
> who draws a line between whos agreement is needed and whos not. So
> if you want to help here, this would be welcome
>

yes, I'll try to do that.

I started going through the git history putting together a list of authors
with their contributions with a suggestion what to do with that (a final
decision regarding who to ask for agreement is something I cannot make but
I will document my opinion but IANAL).

Is ffmpeg's git history enough or were there also several authors for the
original mplayer code? If so I will go through those commits as well.

Regards,

Robert