[FFmpeg-devel] Relicensing filters and general approach to crowd funding

[Robert Krüger]

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at>wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 06, 2012 at 12:47:14PM +0100, Robert Krüger wrote:
> > Hi
> > On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at
> >wrote:
> >
> > > Hi
> > >
> > > On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 01:57:38PM +0100, Robert Krüger wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Roger Pack <rogerdpack2 at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > >> First of all, would someone be willing and able to find a price
> that
> > > > >> would make the copyright holders agree to relicensing? If none of
> the
> > > > >> developers would like to that, would it be considered appropriate
> if I
> > > > >> wrote to the (according to the source I think 5) copyright
> holders to
> > > > >> ask them?
> > > > >
> > > > > Maybe you could ask the developers if they'd be ok if you
> relicensed
> > > > > it to LGPL? Or maybe you've already tried that?
> > > > No, I haven't because I think the value of the particular filters is
> > > > significant and I simply didn't dare to ask them to give them away
> > > > since I am asking because I want to use the filters in a product and
> > > > therefore I am willing to and think it is fair to pay for
> relicensing.
> > > > In this case I just think more people (like you obviously) would pay
> a
> > > > bit for this to happen and this could be a good opportunity for the
> > > > project to gather money.
> > > >
> > > > Since nobody else reacted, I will probably write to the copyright
> > > > holders myself and ask them, what fair conditions would be for a
> > > > relicensing and then either pay or attempt to raise the requested
> > > > money if a price is agreed upon. We will see.
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Anyway I'd be willing to pitch in a few bucks :)
> > > >
> > > > Good to know :-). I'll let you know if anything happens on this
> front.
> > >
> > > There is a company that offers 7k Euro to get yadif relicensed to LGPL
> > > if someone wants to add more to this, thats is surely not unwelcome
> > >
> > my company will add another 1,5k if it gets relicensed. Are you
> interested
> > in pursuing a crown funding approach using one of the big platforms to
> > raise more money (would require a financial goal to be defined and, of
> > course, they charge a percentage of the money) or do you just want to
> wait
> > who else is going to throw in some money if asked on the list?
>
> crowd funding sounds interresting, how exactly would this work ?
>
>
Take for example indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/).

One way to do it (fixed funding):

You would register a campaign say "Relicensing Yadif to LGPL" and define a
campaign goal, say 20000 Euros.

Then you would announce the campaign wherever you like (probably on
ffmpeg-user) so interested parties can participate.

They go to the indiegogo website and pledge an amount (this is legally
binding) which they have to pay, if the campaign goal (20000 in my example)
is reached. But they don't have to pay anything, if the campaign goal is
not reached. However, often the campaign goal is even exceeded (e.g. the
Kdenlive refactoring campaign, which was how I came across Indiegogo first,
had a goal of 4000$ and raised 7400$).

Indiegogo then takes 4% of the campaign goal (they offer a 25% discount for
non-profit organisations but the conditions that need to be met must be
checked in detail, s. http://www.indiegogo.com/indiegogo-faq), which is
quite a lot of money but if not having to organise everything like credit
card processing, organisation etc. it might be tolerable. The decision of
the copyright holders obviously. I think for many people the deal here is
to trade the advantage of less hassle and a working platform for something
like this for the percentage (much like app stores do for ISVs) and in many
cases theses campaigns would never have happened in the first place in the
absence of such a platform. That's probably why they are so successful.

IANAL but I would expect that it would first have to be agreed upon by the
copyright holders, that the conditions are OK and that the money goes to
ffmpeg (which might then split and redistribute it, I don't know).

There are other minor things like offering people stuff like T-Shirts or
mentioning them on the website as project sponsors if they give money
beyond a certain amount but I don't think this is required.

Btw, I have no business relationship with Indiegogo.


>
> >
> >
> > > but whats mainly missing ATM is
> > > a list of copyright holders of yadif who need to agree
> > > someone contacting them
> > > an agreement on how to split the money up
> > >
> > > Iam a bit busy to do this myself atm, also i dont want to be the one
> > > who draws a line between whos agreement is needed and whos not. So
> > > if you want to help here, this would be welcome
> > >
> >
> > yes, I'll try to do that.
> >
> > I started going through the git history putting together a list of
> authors
> > with their contributions with a suggestion what to do with that (a final
> > decision regarding who to ask for agreement is something I cannot make
> but
> > I will document my opinion but IANAL).
> >
>
> > Is ffmpeg's git history enough or were there also several authors for the
> > original mplayer code? If so I will go through those commits as well.
>
> I dont remember well enough, so mplayer git surely has to be checked
> too
>

I will go through it as well.