[Vorbis-dev] BSD-STYLE SOURCE LICENSE

[Arc Riley]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 11:50:37AM +0530, Chiranjeevi Melam wrote:
>
> Can some body help me what does
> BSD-STYLE SOURCE LICENSE mean.
>
> whether i've to get license kind of stuff
>
> Xiph.org Foundation or what??
>
> i'm planning to implement OGG/VORBIS decoder on some DSP platform and confused with the source of source code.Please let me know from where exactly i can get one.

Basically, it means that you can freely use the code with almost no
restriction.  You don't need a specific license, the Xiph License
(basically the same as BSD) allows you full use of the code without
having to pay royalties.  You can use code under this license in
proprietary products.

As you can read in COPYING, however, you do need to retain a copy of the
license with your distributions.  This is basically a legal disclaimer
to ensure that Xiph doesn't get misrepresented or sued by one of your
customers because the code has a bug and causes loss of income.  These
legal issues are the only reasons why it's not in the public domain.

Also, it's "Ogg Vorbis", neither are acronimns.  Ogg is a multimedia
container format, and Vorbis is one of the codecs that is used within
it.  There are other Xiph codecs under the same license which you may
also want to look into implementing as well.

For putting Ogg Vorbis on a DSP, check out the Tremor project, which is
an Ogg Vorbis decoder designed for embedded devices.

Hope this helps.