[vorbis] Vorbis licensing...

[Firelight Multimedia]

please dont tell me this .. you're saying im releasing a dll (fmod.dll from
www.fmod.org) which i am NOT going to make opensource (it has sensitive
proprietary stuff in it which i dont want available to competitors), and i
cant link vorbis into it?  I cant believe this would be true ... if it is i
will have to drop vorbis support immediately and i am about to offer you
10,000 potential customers!
(im not modifying the code btw, and if i optimized parts of it in asm etc, i
was planning to submit the code back to vorbis)
Brett

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Moffitt" <jack at icecast.org>
To: <vorbis at xiph.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: [vorbis] Vorbis licensing...

> > We spent a little time here taking a look at
> > the Vorbis licensing scheme and ran into some
> > possible issues. In particular, the Vorbis
> > FAQ page here says that the LGPL license applies
> > to Vorbis libraries and GPL applies to source
> > code (at least that's what I gather).
>
> Both licenses apply to source code.
>
> > Reading the text of these Gnu licenses implies
> > that we cannot compile the source code into our
> > executable. It implies that we can distribute
> > a DLL with Vorbis in it and that if we have a
> > modified version of that DLL, we need to provide
> > source code for it.
>
> You can distirbute a dll with vorbis in it, but you have to make sure
> source to that dll is available (if ti's the normal vorbis dll's you can
> just poitn them to us :)
>
> > Is this correct? More in particular, exactly how
> > can or can't we use Vorbis in a commercial application.
>
> You aren't allowed to use GPL things in a closed source application.
> GPLed items currently include: example code, ogg123, and various tools.
>
> LGPL applies to all code that is a library.  Like libogg, libvorbis,
> libvorbisfile, libao, etc.
>
> If you use GPL code in your application, your application mustu also be
> GPL.  With the LGPL you may use the LGPLed code as long as it's
> dynamically linked. Ie, if the LGPLed code is a dll, the DLL must be
> LGPL, but the rest of the app that links in the DLL does not need to be.
>
> > This specific question is not directly answered in
> > any way in the FAQ, yet it is exactly the question
> > we want to know the answer to.
>
> I guess it assumes more knowledge of the subject than most people
> reading the faq will likely have.  I'll see about having kim update it.
>
> Unless you guys _can't_ use a dll with vorbis in it, you should be in
> the clear, which is why those have the commercial friendly LGPL.
>
> jack.
>
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