[FFmpeg-devel] GPL version matter

[Diego Biurrun]

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 08:08:10PM +0200, GISQUET Christophe wrote:
> 
> Diego Biurrun a ?crit :
> > I would really appreciate it if you could contribute this under LGPL,
> > like the rest of FFmpeg.  We are not talking about a big piece of code
> > and as you may have seen from the thread, it might cause quite a bit of
> > a stir in the project...
> 
> I've triple-licensed that code under GPL 2 and 3, and LGPL3, strict
> version numbers. If the versioning is troublesome to you, then let
> it only be available under GPL, that is until a new revision of the
> {L,}GPL is out for my inspection. I still strongly disagree with the
> "a version -> any version" of the LGPL2.x, and have already put aside
> my dislike for v3 to allow such license.

Sorry, but this is not about you putting aside your dislikes.  Licensing
matters are a fundamental concern for any free software project.  This
applies to FFmpeg as well.

You are absolutely free to license your work under whatever license or
combination of licenses you wish.  However, we are also free to accept
or reject your work based on licensing.

The license of FFmpeg is LGPL 2.1 with an explicit "or any later
version" clause.  We also have some parts that are covered by the GPL 2
with an explicit "or any later version" clause, some under an MIT license,
some under the license of libjpeg, some in the public domain and one
non-essential file is under a non-free license.

So in summary the situation is plenty complicated as-is.  Furthermore,
the inclusion of GPL-licensed code in FFmpeg is already a contentious
issue firmly disliked by many contributors.

If you wish to contribute to FFmpeg, which would be very much welcome,
then please set aside your concerns and accept the licensing as one part
of the rules that you have to abide, just like code formatting, reviews
and multiple other things.

FFmpeg is around 250000 lines of code, your contribution is around 250
lines of code.  I can assure you that all of us dislike one part or
another of the rules, but still we accept them as a compromise.

Diego