[vorbis-dev] Re: New Directshow filters preview...

[illiminable]

Comments inline...
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stan Seibert" <volsung at xiph.org>
To: <vorbis-dev at xiph.org>
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: [vorbis-dev] Re: New Directshow filters preview...

<p>> On Thu, 2004-03-25 at 22:17, ozone at algorithm.com.au wrote:
> > 3.  Like many of the core xiph.org projects, our filters are
> > BSD-licensed, and not GPL-licensed.  (This is important for some
> > people, since I personally plan to use these filters in contexts
> > outside of open-source projects.)  I don't want to get into a license
> > war, I just wish to point out that the difference in licensing may be
> > the deciding factor for some users.
>
> As a tangent to this discussion, does it make any sense to license
> DirectShow filters under the GPL in the first place?  Seems kind of
> weird given that their sole purpose is to link to proprietary code.
>

All directshow filters link to proprietary code. strmbase.lib quartz.lib etc
which are required to be linked to every filter. All directshow baseclass
are source code provided with an "All rights Reserved" copyrigth notice. Not
to mention COM which directshow is based on is also based on propriety code
and the MFC.

It's impossible to even build a directshow without linking to proprietary
code.

> I guess strictly speaking, if you never distribute GPL plugins with
> DirectShow, there is no violation.  However, it means no vendor can
> preinstall GPL plugins on a Windows system either, which seems
> counterproductive.  LGPL or BSD seem like much more appropriate licenses
> for this situation.
>

>From the gnu site about QPL :
 This is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible with the
GNU GPL. It also causes major practical inconvenience, because modified
sources can only be distributed as patches.
We recommend that you avoid using the QPL for anything that you write, and
use QPL-covered software packages only when absolutely necessary. However,
this avoidance no longer applies to Qt itself, since Qt is now also released
under the GNU GPL.

Since the QPL is incompatible with the GNU GPL, you cannot take a
GPL-covered program and QPL-covered program and link them together, no
matter how.

However, if you have written a program that uses QPL-covered library (called
FOO), and you want to release your program under the GNU GPL, you can easily
do that. You can resolve the conflict for your program by adding a notice
like this to it:

  As a special exception, you have permission to link this program
  with the FOO library and distribute executables, as long as you
  follow the requirements of the GNU GPL in regard to all of the
  software in the executable aside from FOO.
You can do this, legally, if you are the copyright holder for the program.
Add it in the source files, after the notice that says the program is
covered by the GNU GPL.

<p>> I see the CoreVorbis plugin is also licensed under the QPL.  Does anyone
> know how that fits into all this?
>
> ---
> Stan Seibert
>
>
> --- >8 ----
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<p>--- >8 ----
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