[FFmpeg-devel] Searching for a ffmpeg BCLO (bastard chief legal officer)

[Diego Biurrun]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 06:56:22PM -0400, Chris Ribe wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 03:31:45PM -0400, Chris Ribe wrote:
> >  > >
> >  > > There is one more thing you should point out, though: It needs to be
> >  > > clear which version of FFmpeg he is using and what changes he did make,
> >  > > if any.  This is the part that may be interesting to us, there is the
> >  > > chance that some of his changes could be useful.
> >  >
> >  > Alright, I add the following and sent the letter:
> >
> >  Did you send off the letter already?
> 
> I did send the letter, and I received a positive response to it on
> Saturday.   I just sent an acknowledgment of his response.  This
> raises the question of where to copy the correspondence.  Should I cc
> correspondence to this list?  Should I copy it to the issue tracker?
> Should I just summarize the correspondence on the issue tracker?

Good question.  Copying here surely won't hurt unless you want to keep
things a tad more private.  Judgment call...

> >  I should note here that regarding the changes made to the source code
> >  it's more important to follow the spirit rather than the letter of the
> >  license.  The idea is that is should be possible (and ideally simple) to
> >  find out what was changed and how.
> >
> >  Having each file contain a changelog is a possible solution, but not
> >  very practical.  A public revision control system is a good solution, as
> >  would be a clear statement which version/revision the code is derived
> >  from and one or multiple diff files.
> 
> While this would be nice, and certainly worth asking for, I can't read
> the L/GPL as requiring it.  It seems to me that we should be careful
> to distinguish between things license violators must do, and things we
> would like them to do.

I think that we are more lenient than what the LGPL explicitly requires.
Have another at paragraph 2b):

    b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices
    stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

Note the use of the word "any".

Diego