[MPlayer-G2-dev] dual licensing

[Roberto Togni]

On 2004.02.22 14:23, Arpi wrote:
> Hi,
Hi all.
[...]
> buy it. (it's the next topic, to how to handle the money. we clearly
> need
> a company for that, and what to do with the money: share between
> developers,
I see it very difficult. Thinking about Italian laws, a company won't  
pay you with a suitcase full of currency, you will need some legal  
entity (a company, a foundation, a single-man company, ..) to receive  
the money. Then you have to redistribute them to developers, that will  
have to receive them and pay income taxes on them. Speaking for myself,  
unless it's a big amount, i probably won't take them.
> buy hw for developers, buy hw for server etc...)
That's probably easier, but you still have to receive the money first.
>
[...]
> > >  - firms DO steal -> court -> lotsa time+money consumed ->  
> success
> doubtful
Not possible in real world. Think about sueing a company (let's hope  
it's not a big one), maybe in a foreign country, and having to prove  
that they stole your code: it will take lot of money, time and  
resources. It's not doable by an individual. The only hope (if any) is  
to have some association like FSF to support you, but going commercial  
is not the best way to encourage them to help you.

> 
> Also, the best we can reach with gpl license, is that they will  
> remove
> the gpl'ed code from their product (ie. pay someone to re-write from
> scratch, but they'll still using our ideas and algorithms, as they  
> are
> not patented).
The opposite is also true: we're able to use other people ideas and  
patents because we don't make money on it, else they'll probably sue  
us.

> g2 code is mostly clean, most of the core was written by me alone,
> some of the plugins was written/ported by someone else.
> it's not too late to ask agreement from contributors now, and
> remove code if they don't agree. future contributors have to
> accept the dual licensing. they did in the past for libavcodec,
> which has such license since years.
> (as Fabrice's employer company is using it in closedsrc product)
??? Do you mean using code in violation of LGPL?
AFAIK libavcodec does not have a double license, it just contains some  
optional GPL'd code. At least there's no mention of a double licence in  
the docs, and noone asked me if i agreed to double licence my  
contributions (i speak only for myself, i don't know if other developer  
agreed to such a double licence).

If we're going to a double licence system , it has to be made very  
clear to every contributor.

 
> > And if we choose a dual license, we should apply it to the whole
> > projcet, not just parts of it. Otherwise we'll end up in a
> > license hell where nobody knows what may be used and what not.
Agree, see below. We can only make an exception for some very optional  
features noone cares about.
> 
> it cannot be done. we won't be able to get Michael to dual-license
> his code, or get libmpeg2 to do so.
> it will be even problematic to get swscaler under such license, which
> is required for g2 to work...
I think that's the main thing, that have to be discussed before we  
start fighting about the licence: what capabilities will the core have?
Suppose a company buys a licence for the code, what will that code be  
able to do?
- No codecs: native codecs are mostly in libavcodec, win32 loader is on  
the edge of legality (and it comes form avilib anyway, so can't be  
relicensed), xanim and real loaders are legal, but the use of the  
binary codecs outside the program they come with is not. External  
libraries (xvid, libmad, ...) are outside our control, i don't know if  
they have a double licence. They will probably be able to buy a licence  
for DivX.
- Which demuxers? Surely not asf (patented, legal problems in the past,  
don't know if things are different now), avi, probably mpeg.
- Filters: it depends on the filter authors, if they agree on the  
double license, and assuming that the filter algorithm is not patented.
- Input: no DVD (css mess), no streaming (no Real, doubtly mms, rstp  
uses external library).
- And so on, this list is surely incomplete.

For most existing stuff (filters, demuxers, input modules, vo, ao, ..),  
unless we want to rewrite everything from scratch, we need agreement  
from every contributor.

So, what will you be able to do with the core alone? Buy a licence for  
it and then steal all other stuff, assuming that the MPlayer team won't  
go after you because you licenced the core? :)))))

And remember that the company will also have to get a licence for all  
the patented stuff (supposing they can do it), if they want to use the  
code commercially: we're getting away with it only because we make no  
money with MPlayer.

MPlayer is used because of what's able to do: if it can't do anything,  
noone will care about licensing it.


IMHO, the only viable option is putting the code on a licence more  
"commercial friendly" than GPL, but still accepted as free, like LGPL,  
and have companies pay developers to enhance/mantain/bugfix the code.
That will solve a lot of problems:
- No legal entity required for MPlayer team, companies interact with  
developers at a personal level
- Companies will be on their own with the patents/trade secrets/ 
intellectual property mess (we are not selling the code)
- MPlayer will remain a free software project: not upsetting  
developers, not scaring away contributors, with no obligation to the  
users of the code
- no "religion wars" from free sw fundamentalists against MPlayer (bad  
publicity, less contributors)

But we still need agreement from developers, and we must be sure that  
this will bring us enough advantages to compensate the troubles.


> A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team
Ciao,
 Roberto