Important notice regarding pantson.MPEG
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Important notice regarding pantson.MPEG
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| Hi As the conversation has been tagged onto the end of someone elses thread I thought I best state here that due to the free mpeg2dec/libmpeg2 lbrary used in this module, I have to release this module under the GPL license. This means that any code using my module must also be put under the GPL license too. (this means that source code must be freely avaliable) I am trying to contact the authours of the original module to confirm this. sorry for any inconvenience. |
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| Surely it means that any modifications to the module code must be released under the GPL (and the module source must be freely available on demand), but not any code that uses it? |
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| Darn. The GPL is viral, so if you write a program that includes GPL code, your program must be GPL too. :( |
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| probelm is.. I can't find any librays nowdays thats not on the GPL license |
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| I've always wondered if anyone really legally fights a GPL offender. Can't you just offer to include some royalties with every sale? |
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| Have you looked at ffmpeg? it's LGPL (if you remove the 2 GPL dependencies) although the legal issues with mpeg4 patents are still a gray issue: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/legal.html |
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| I've always wondered if anyone really legally fights a GPL offender. Can't you just offer to include some royalties with every sale? possibly, you could get an alternate redistribution license of a GPLed program/library, just like how the MySQL company both has a free GPL version and a payware one with less restrictions. However, that only works if the program is the work of a single copyright owner -- many have 3rd party dependencies which are GPL as well, etc. It can get pretty complicated to your your way up the stream... :-? |
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| probelm is.. I can't find any librays nowdays thats not on the GPL license I haven't seen it myself, but I did come across some references to the Berkeley MPEG player, mpeg_play, which is LGPL as well. |
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| Or possibly here: http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/video/mssg-free-mpeg-software.html Or here: http://happypenguin.org/show?SDL%20MPEG%20Library (SDL MPEG module, LGPL) |
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| It looks like LibTheora is also under the more permissive BSD license -- that would be an interesting mod to see float by as well. :-? |
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| i'm looking at Libtheora at the mo. I'll also look at the MPEG librarys.. thinking about it isn't the MPEG format uder some kinda royalty anyway. |
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| I've always wondered if anyone really legally fights a GPL offender. Yes. The EFF. Can't you just offer to include some royalties with every sale? That's not the point of the GPL. If they wanted money, they would've made it a commercial library (like Bink). They want software instead. |
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| If they wanted software to be created with it, they would use LGPL, MIT, BSD or another license, but surely not GPL. GPL is for those wanting source, not wanting software as only few are willing to give hundreds of hours of hard work out in source. (its one thing to make freeware but a totally different thing to give out sources which you can not secure and therefor partially might be used for other stuff and you can't do much against it, as it is even harder to proof a partial usage of code, than it already is for full usage of a GPLs library for example) |
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| You can always ask the original authors if you have a legitimate reason to be unable to follow up on that chunk of the GPL. People that GPL their code tend to be pretty generous, so there is a good chance they will try to help you, if you have a good reason. I agree with Dreamora; GPL should never be used for libraries; it just kills their usability, complicates them (such that the API doesn't even come into play when deciding if a library is worth the bother), and annoys the hell out of people. If a free library wants to be used freely, it should be on the MIT license with some added chunks, or at least LGPL. A library has no direct "end user" (the developer is the end user, but he seems to get two piles of demands instead of just one), and the GPL does not approach that very kindly. The end user is quite free to do what he wants with the software, so why isn't a developer who uses the library for an end user application? I did recently watch "Revolution OS" (an interesting documentary), which gave me a rather different (more appreciative) view of Stallman's goal to encourage sharing. I think his error is that he doesn't recognize "fun" and unnecessary software, which I think stands as an exception. He also doesn't seem to recognize that there are a lot more places where things can be free, aside from software; if GPL did make all software free via its viral ways, it would be completely unfair in contrast to other industries. |
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| Dont worry, wildVideo will satisfy all your hi-def video needs shortly. (And no it's not gpl too) /low down dirty shameless plug |
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| Oh ya, WildVideo.. I bookmarked that worklog once, hows it going? |
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| Theora was once said to be done but never finished due to lacking of time, BRL is pretty busy on other things at the moment. Another should-but-not-get-done is audio streaming, have some workaround, but not official. |
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| We are planning to use the pantson.mpeg in parts of our project. Does the GPL license mean we cannot keep the source code of our project a secret. Regards, Ramesh |
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| Does the GPL license mean we cannot keep the source code of our project a secret. Correct. |
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| If they wanted software to be created with it, That's not what I said. I said they wanted software.If they had used (say) a MIT license, they wouldn't necessarily be getting any software in return. In fact they might rather be expected to have to buy software they practically wrote themselves. as only few are willing to give hundreds of hours of hard work out in source. Really? How many people do you think worked on Eclipse over the years? GNU? OpenOffice? Linux? Java? Apache? GIMP? |
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| Since ours is a commercial software product, we cannot reveal the source code.Most users of Blitzmax will be developing proprietary software, this is a huge restriction on them. Are there any alternatives for playing mpeg files. Regards, Ramesh |
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| Any other video format support is also welcome. I have seen code that works for avi using mciSendString but it allways pops up a new window.Your advice is solicited. Ramesh |
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| FD: There are a few really large projects that are GPL. But have you ever looked how many opensourced LGPL, BSD, MIT projects are out there? Do you think anyone would even touch SDL if it was GPL? Not even Linux is fully GPL enforced, otherwise it wouldn't have a single graphics driver and many other drivers wouldn't have been created as well. I don't say that GPL is bad for a project as whole. But for libraries, GPL is highly contra productive as it does in fact not allow to use the library in an application, it only does allow to use it in a source of an application. |
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