[FFmpeg-devel] some licensing issues

[Diego Biurrun]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 02:41:43PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 12:01:02PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 04:18:25PM +0100, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> > > 
> > > Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > > > I've stumbled across a few more licensing issues/nitpicks:
> > > >
> > > > The following files contain the words "All rights reserved" in the
> > > > licensing header:
> > > >
> > > > libswscale/yuv2rgb.c
> > > > libswscale/yuv2rgb_mlib.c
> > > > libswscale/yuv2rgb_template.c
> > > > libavcodec/alac.c
> > > > libavcodec/armv4l/simple_idct_arm.S
> > > >
> > > > This wording with a subsequent grant of rights through the (L)GPL is
> > > > meaningless, but I'm afraid the term is one that easily raises red flags
> > > > when people stumble across it.  Thus I would like to remove it.
> > > 
> > > The "All rights reserved" tag is required under one of the many
> > > international copyright conventions (I forget which one) for copyright
> > > in the work to be recognised at all.  However, since a few years, all
> > > signatories of this particular one have also signed the Berne
> > > convention, thus making this requirement moot.
> > > 
> > > As for "All rights reserved" being present in conjunction with the LGPL,
> > > I see it as an initial (redundant) initialiser, with specific grants
> > > then given by the following text.  Hence, I don't perceive this as an
> > > inconsistency.  Then again, I am not a lawyer...
> > 
> > That's interesting to hear.
> > 
> > I'm still of the opinion that our license headers should be complete
> > consistent and as identical as possible so as not to create confusion or
> > doubt.  Thus I'll remove this text from the few headers where we have it
> > unless somebody objects.
> 
> as i said, you should ask the authors before changing the license
> headers, likely they will be fine with the change but if not you will not
> change them

That's 2 out of 5 file headers.  I did not intend to change those before
asking Walken anyway.

I think the main question is how much mpeg2dec code remains in those
files.  I'm looking at yuv2rgb_mlib.c and AFAICT all the code was
rewritten by Michael.  The following 'svn annotate' is quite telling,
revision 2733 is the initial import, 9477 is a rewrite by Michael:

http://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk/libswscale/yuv2rgb_mlib.c?annotate=9477

Basically only the license header, a few braces and #includes remain.

IMO we should drop the mpeg2dec license header from that file and
replace it with an FFmpeg one.  Of course we can add a note to the
effect that this was once inspired by mpeg2dec.

This has piqued my interest.  I'll investigate further.

> iam cc-ing this to walken

me too :)

Diego