[FFmpeg-devel] some licensing issues

[Michel Lespinasse]

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.

I agree it does seem redundant. Under copyright law all rights are
reserved by default; the attached license then grants the specified
rights to the receiver.

> > > 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

I would certainly not object to removing "all reserved rights".

The headers I used in mpeg2dec/libmpeg2 are as follows
(pretty standard actually)

/*
 * foo.c
 * Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Michel Lespinasse <walken at zoy.org>
 * Copyright (C) 1999-2000 Aaron Holtzman <aholtzma at ess.engr.uvic.ca>
 *
 * This file is part of mpeg2dec, a free MPEG-2 video stream decoder.
 * See http://libmpeg2.sourceforge.net/ for updates.
 *
 * mpeg2dec is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * mpeg2dec is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
 */

Hope this helps,

-- 
Michel "Walken" Lespinasse
"Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian cat away from being the villain
in a James Bond movie." -- Dennis Miller