[vorbis-dev] Vorbis license terms?

[Steve Anichini]

First, I apologize for opening this can of worms. Second, thank you for
making libvorbis LGPL'd.

Third, my two cents:

A GPL'd codec library is NOT sufficient for unemcumbered development and
propagation of the standard. In an ideal world, all software would be GPL'd.
But this is not an ideal world. And just "wishing" it to be so isn't going
to make it happen.

I work for a smaller developer that would be interested in using libvorbis
in the future. We are stuck between the rock and the hard place of being too
small to be able to afford MP3 royalties and not having the resources to
develop a codec in house. While someday in the future our game engine may
become OpenSource, it will never be under the GPL, because we won't open
source game-specific code - it just doesn't make sense to. Games are
one-shot things, for the most part, and there is little reuse of game
specific code from one experience to the next. We reuse the engine - that's
why we have one.

Given such a situation we could never use a license such as the GPL that
would taint the entire game. Thus we can't use any GPL'd components in our
engine.

We have already had great success using FreeType in our engine, and it has
helped us and we've helped them by submitting patches back. It's a win-win
situation with an LPGL-like license, where we get to benefit from the
library and the library benefits by the additional resources we spend fixing
bugs and improving things.

If you want wide adoption of Vorbis, it makes sense to give the reference
implementation a license that allows its use in non-open source projects.
Wide adoption of Vorbis will only happen with the support of Windows-based
audio players and other applications - for all the talk of Linux, Windows
still dominates the desktop and that is not going to change anytime soon.
Windows applications tend to be closed-source, and while that is changing,
it's not going to change overnight.

It's not an us vs. them type of thing - closed-source application developers
can help open-source library developers and vice-versa.

Compromises have to be made during the battle in order to win the war - I
would prefer a released libvorbis with a weaker license that has a very wide
adoption rate over a GPL'd libvorbis that is a niche player because of an
overly restrictive license.

-steve anichini
www.jellyvision.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lynn Winebarger" <owinebar at free-expression.org>
To: <vorbis-dev at xiph.org>
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2000 10:21 PM
Subject: Re: [vorbis-dev] Vorbis license terms?

>     I think it depends on what you mean by seeing the codec succeed.  I
> would say if people who want to use a codec whose
> author/designer/inventors don't encumber them via licensing
> fees/restrictions, then I'd say a GPL codec library would be more than
> sufficient.
>
> > There's nothing that stops someone from taking GPLed code as a baseline,
> > writing their own very similar version, and using it.  Or for that
matter,
> > if someone wrote "WinVorbis" and used libvorbis compiled in, is there
> > any way to know?  Probably not.  That's what I mean by honor system.
>
>      If you have reason to believe your copyright is being infringed by a
> proprietary software producer, there are legal recourses that don't depend
> on the honor system.  You can force the vendor in question to produce
> their source code, if you have enough evidence (how much evidence, I don't
> know).   Damages in such a case of blatant infringement could easily wipe
> out a small business who depend on using infringing copies, and put a
> decent dent even in larger companies.  There are also criminal penalties
> to be considered for willful infringers.
>
> Lynn
>
>
>
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