5 ms·

We are not able to enforce the GPL anyway, so let's help companies use VLC and contribute back, so this benefits all users. Competition. AppStores and other c

by jbk 14y ago

We are not able to enforce the GPL anyway, so let's help companies use VLC and contribute back, so this benefits all users. Competition. AppStores and other crap of the post-PC era. :)

belorn 14y ago
okey, so beyond AppStore and theirs rules/eula/requirements and so on, the goal is to increase third-party contributions from companies? I would be very interested to see some data on that, say gathered over a year or two. Licenses decision really need more scientific approach, and if the main desire from choosing a license is to attract more third-party contributions, GPL vs LGPL is an interesting situation. Have you seen a change in third-party contributions from companies for the libVLCcore after the license change? Its not the same type of software as the mods, but would still be interesting in this context.
- jbk 14y ago
  > okey, so beyond AppStore and theirs rules/eula/requirements and so on, the goal is to increase third-party contributions from companies? Yes > Have you seen a change in third-party contributions from companies for the libVLCcore after the license change? Yes, but most of them asked for more.
  - belorn 14y ago
    Could you give, or point where one might find more details. How many more lines of code from third-party patches? 2x? 5x? 10x? Hows the quality? Are there more donations? If one take a scientific point of view, whats been the practical changes of how third-party contributions? Those details can be very useful for the community of free and open source software, and when deciding licensing for oneself.
    - jbk 14y ago
      So far, this is just a feeling, but I cannot give numbers, because I don't have them. I'll try to compute some in the next months.
- twelve45 14y ago
  Most commercial work these days leverage several open source libraries. And once a library becomes part of your core product, it is in your interest to support further development of that library by contributing code, time, money, etc. Unlike other OSS licenses like BSD, Apache, LGPL, etc, GPL makes it impossible to utilize the library in any way in a commercial product. My current company works on some video related stuff, and we use OpenCV, ffmpeg etc but we completely steered clear of libVLC due to the GPL licensing (even though we think it's a fantastic piece of software). We will however be revisiting this now due to this excellent work by jbk.
  - sciurus 14y ago
    "GPL makes it impossible to utilize the library in any way in a commercial product" That's not strictly true. You could license your commercial product as GPL, or (more likely) contact the library's authors and negotiate usage of the code under another license.
    - pilom 14y ago
      As the OP has demonstrated, "Contact the library's authors and negotiate usage of the code under another license" is EXTREMELY difficult for a project maintainer and would thus be near impossible for anyone else.
      - lambda 14y ago
        It is much better if the price and terms are simply public up front. For instance, we were worrying about PyQt (GPL + commercial option) vs. PySide (LGPL) for a project, where PySide didn't support certain things that we needed. But then we realized that the PyQt commercial license comes with reasonable terms, and costs only £350, and it wasn't even worth the time worrying over it any more. So yeah, "contact the authors" can be hard, but an up-front agreement and price can make it pretty easy.
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      I'ts not just "not strictly true," it's not true at all. Nothing in the GPL prohibits GPL'd code from being used in commercial products. What is prohibited is using it in proprietary, closed-source products. You can have a product which is both F/OSS and commercial. Ask Red Hat, for example.
jordigh 14y ago
> We are not able to enforce the GPL anyway Why not? What prevented you from asking someone like the Software Freedom Law Centre or Software Conservacy to help you enforce it? Do you actually need lawyers to enforce the license?
- jbk 14y ago
  Because it is very hard, very boring and time consuming. And SFLC and SC care about "more important projects" as we were told. I usually shut down 2 violations per week and it is not decreasing...

by jbk 14y ago

We are not able to enforce the GPL anyway, so let's help companies use VLC and contribute back, so this benefits all users. Competition. AppStores and other crap of the post-PC era. :)

belorn 14y ago

okey, so beyond AppStore and theirs rules/eula/requirements and so on, the goal is to increase third-party contributions from companies? I would be very interested to see some data on that, say gathered over a year or two. Licenses decision really need more scientific approach, and if the main desire from choosing a license is to attract more third-party contributions, GPL vs LGPL is an interesting situation. Have you seen a change in third-party contributions from companies for the libVLCcore after the license change? Its not the same type of software as the mods, but would still be interesting in this context.

jbk 14y ago
> okey, so beyond AppStore and theirs rules/eula/requirements and so on, the goal is to increase third-party contributions from companies? Yes > Have you seen a change in third-party contributions from companies for the libVLCcore after the license change? Yes, but most of them asked for more.
- belorn 14y ago
  Could you give, or point where one might find more details. How many more lines of code from third-party patches? 2x? 5x? 10x? Hows the quality? Are there more donations? If one take a scientific point of view, whats been the practical changes of how third-party contributions? Those details can be very useful for the community of free and open source software, and when deciding licensing for oneself.
  - jbk 14y ago
    So far, this is just a feeling, but I cannot give numbers, because I don't have them. I'll try to compute some in the next months.
twelve45 14y ago
Most commercial work these days leverage several open source libraries. And once a library becomes part of your core product, it is in your interest to support further development of that library by contributing code, time, money, etc. Unlike other OSS licenses like BSD, Apache, LGPL, etc, GPL makes it impossible to utilize the library in any way in a commercial product. My current company works on some video related stuff, and we use OpenCV, ffmpeg etc but we completely steered clear of libVLC due to the GPL licensing (even though we think it's a fantastic piece of software). We will however be revisiting this now due to this excellent work by jbk.
- sciurus 14y ago
  "GPL makes it impossible to utilize the library in any way in a commercial product" That's not strictly true. You could license your commercial product as GPL, or (more likely) contact the library's authors and negotiate usage of the code under another license.
  - pilom 14y ago
    As the OP has demonstrated, "Contact the library's authors and negotiate usage of the code under another license" is EXTREMELY difficult for a project maintainer and would thus be near impossible for anyone else.
    - lambda 14y ago
      It is much better if the price and terms are simply public up front. For instance, we were worrying about PyQt (GPL + commercial option) vs. PySide (LGPL) for a project, where PySide didn't support certain things that we needed. But then we realized that the PyQt commercial license comes with reasonable terms, and costs only £350, and it wasn't even worth the time worrying over it any more. So yeah, "contact the authors" can be hard, but an up-front agreement and price can make it pretty easy.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    I'ts not just "not strictly true," it's not true at all. Nothing in the GPL prohibits GPL'd code from being used in commercial products. What is prohibited is using it in proprietary, closed-source products. You can have a product which is both F/OSS and commercial. Ask Red Hat, for example.

jordigh 14y ago

> We are not able to enforce the GPL anyway Why not? What prevented you from asking someone like the Software Freedom Law Centre or Software Conservacy to help you enforce it? Do you actually need lawyers to enforce the license?

jbk 14y ago
Because it is very hard, very boring and time consuming. And SFLC and SC care about "more important projects" as we were told. I usually shut down 2 violations per week and it is not decreasing...