mirror of
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer.git
synced 2024-12-22 16:26:39 +00:00
Move licensing page over from www module
We need to go over this and merge it with the legal-information page and the bits in the FAQ, but for now just move it over as-is so we can retire the documentation subsection in the www module.
This commit is contained in:
parent
c01234795c
commit
4fec770228
3 changed files with 164 additions and 27 deletions
30
TODO.md
30
TODO.md
|
@ -1,12 +1,5 @@
|
|||
# Todo
|
||||
|
||||
This is just a simple TODO list to follow progress of the port from
|
||||
gstreamer.com content to hotdoc
|
||||
|
||||
Pages to review:
|
||||
- [installing]
|
||||
- installing/on-windows.md
|
||||
|
||||
For-later pages:
|
||||
- tutorials/qt-tutorials.md [tpm: this should all be rewritten from scratch with qmlglsink; QtGStreamer is outdated and unmaintained, we should not promote it]
|
||||
- basic-media-player.md
|
||||
|
@ -14,22 +7,11 @@ For-later pages:
|
|||
- using-appsink-appsrc-in-qt.md
|
||||
|
||||
Miscellaneous:
|
||||
- internal refs are used but not defined? (e.g. #getting-gstreamer-source)
|
||||
- faq/git.md should be renamed building.md and turned into general
|
||||
building Q+A or (better) point to a page we have for all that by then
|
||||
- faq/legal.md needs an overhaul, and be made more relevant
|
||||
|
||||
Deleted pages:
|
||||
- 2012.11+Brahmaputra.markdown
|
||||
- 2012.5+Amazon.markdown
|
||||
- 2012.7+Amazon+%28Bugfix+Release+1%29.markdown
|
||||
- 2012.9+Amazon+%28Bugfix+Release+2%29.markdown
|
||||
- 2013.6+Congo.markdown
|
||||
- Contact.markdown
|
||||
- Frequently+Asked+Questions.markdown
|
||||
- Releases.markdown
|
||||
- Upcoming+tutorials.markdown
|
||||
|
||||
- licensing.md and legal-information.md need to be reviewed + merged,
|
||||
possibly with FAQ section.
|
||||
|
||||
old sitemap:
|
||||
|
||||
|
@ -51,15 +33,9 @@ old sitemap:
|
|||
Mac OS X deployment
|
||||
Windows deployment
|
||||
Multiplatform deployment using Cerbero
|
||||
Releases
|
||||
2013.6 Congo
|
||||
2012.11 Brahmaputra
|
||||
2012.9 Amazon (Bugfix Release 2)
|
||||
2012.7 Amazon (Bugfix Release 1)
|
||||
2012.5 Amazon
|
||||
GStreamer reference
|
||||
gst-inspect
|
||||
gst-launch
|
||||
Legal information
|
||||
Frequently Asked Questions
|
||||
Contact
|
||||
Contact
|
||||
|
|
160
markdown/licensing.md
Normal file
160
markdown/licensing.md
Normal file
|
@ -0,0 +1,160 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
short-description: Licensing your applications and plugins for use with GStreamer
|
||||
...
|
||||
|
||||
<!-- FIXME: merge this page with the former sdk's legal-information.md
|
||||
and the legal section from the FAQ
|
||||
-->
|
||||
|
||||
# Licensing your applications and plugins for use with GStreamer
|
||||
|
||||
This document is the result of many discussions both inside the
|
||||
GStreamer community and with stakeholders outside the community. It
|
||||
includes the results of discussions with lawyers, including official
|
||||
representatives of the FSF, to help us ensure we cover the legal issues
|
||||
as correctly as possible. This does not mean the FSF or anyone else
|
||||
endorse the opinions in this page. The opinions only represent the rough
|
||||
consensus of the GStreamer community. The advice contained in here is
|
||||
meant as information and guidance for people developing free and open
|
||||
source software using the GStreamer library, so they are aware of the
|
||||
consequences of their choices. People developing proprietary software or
|
||||
people distributing GStreamer might also find this document useful in
|
||||
order to understand how GStreamer works in a licensing context.
|
||||
|
||||
This text is also meant to explain a little about our thinking in
|
||||
regards to how to deal with the problem of software patents which is an
|
||||
even bigger pain in the field of multimedia than other fields of
|
||||
programming.
|
||||
|
||||
For more information on licensing you can check out our [legal
|
||||
FAQ](frequently-asked-questions/legal.md)
|
||||
|
||||
## Licensing of code contributed to GStreamer itself
|
||||
|
||||
GStreamer is a plugin-based framework licensed under the LGPL. The
|
||||
reason for this choice in licensing is to ensure that everyone can use
|
||||
GStreamer to build applications using licenses of their choice.
|
||||
|
||||
To keep this policy viable, the GStreamer community has made a few
|
||||
licensing rules for code to be included in GStreamer's core or
|
||||
GStreamer's official modules, like our plugin packages. **We require
|
||||
that all code going into our core packages is LGPL**. For the plugin
|
||||
code, we require the **use of the LGPL for all plugins written from
|
||||
scratch or linking to external libraries**. The only exception to this
|
||||
is when plugins contain older code under the BSD and MIT license. They
|
||||
can use those licenses instead and will still be considered for
|
||||
inclusion, we do prefer that all new code written though is at least
|
||||
dual licensed LGPL. We do not accept GPL code to be added to our plugins
|
||||
modules, but we do accept LGPL-licensed plugins using an external GPL
|
||||
library for some of our plugin modules. The reason we demand plugins be
|
||||
licensed under the LGPL, even when they are using a GPL library, is that
|
||||
other developers might want to use the plugin code as a template for
|
||||
plugins linking to non-GPL libraries. We also accept dual licensed
|
||||
plugins for inclusion as long as one of the licenses offered for dual
|
||||
licensing is the LGPL.
|
||||
|
||||
We also do not allow plugins under any license into our core,base or
|
||||
good packages if they have known patent issues associated with them.
|
||||
This means that even a contributed LGPL/MIT licensed implementation of
|
||||
something which there is a licensing body claiming fees for, those
|
||||
plugins would need to go into our gst-plugins-ugly module.
|
||||
|
||||
All new plugins, regardless of licensing or patents tend to have to go
|
||||
through a period in our incubation module, gst-plugins-bad before moving
|
||||
to ugly, base or good.
|
||||
|
||||
## Licensing of applications using GStreamer
|
||||
|
||||
The licensing of GStreamer is no different from a lot of other libraries
|
||||
out there like GTK+ or glibc: we use the [LGPL][LGPL]. What complicates things
|
||||
with regards to GStreamer is its plugin-based design and the heavily
|
||||
patented and proprietary nature of many multimedia codecs. While patents
|
||||
on software are currently only allowed in a small minority of world
|
||||
countries (the US and Australia being the most important of those), the
|
||||
problem is that due to the central place the US hold in the world
|
||||
economy and the computing industry, software patents are hard to ignore
|
||||
wherever you are.
|
||||
|
||||
Due to this situation, many companies, including major GNU/Linux
|
||||
distributions, get trapped in a situation where they either get bad
|
||||
reviews due to lacking out-of-the-box media playback capabilities (and
|
||||
attempts to educate the reviewers have met with little success so far),
|
||||
or go against their own - and the free software movement's - wish to
|
||||
avoid proprietary software. Due to competitive pressure, most choose to
|
||||
add some support. Doing that through pure free software solutions would
|
||||
have them risk heavy litigation and punishment from patent owners. So
|
||||
when the decision is made to include support for patented codecs, it
|
||||
leaves them the choice of either using special proprietary applications,
|
||||
or try to integrate the support for these codecs through proprietary
|
||||
plugins into the multimedia infrastructure provided by GStreamer. Faced
|
||||
with one of these two evils the GStreamer community of course prefer the
|
||||
second option.
|
||||
|
||||
The problem which arises is that most free software and open source
|
||||
applications developed use the GPL as their license. While this is
|
||||
generally a good thing, it creates a dilemma for people who want to put
|
||||
together a distribution. The dilemma they face is that if they include
|
||||
proprietary plugins in GStreamer to support patented formats in a way
|
||||
that is legal for them, they do risk running afoul of the GPL license of
|
||||
the applications. We have gotten some conflicting reports from lawyers
|
||||
on whether this is actually a problem, but the official stance of the
|
||||
FSF is that it is a problem. We view the FSF as an authority on this
|
||||
matter, so we are inclined to follow their interpretation of the GPL
|
||||
license.
|
||||
|
||||
So what does this mean for you as an application developer? Well, it
|
||||
means **you have to make an active decision on whether you want your
|
||||
application to be used together with proprietary plugins or not**. What
|
||||
you decide here will also influence the chances of commercial
|
||||
distributions and Unix vendors shipping your application. The GStreamer
|
||||
community suggest you license your software using a license that will
|
||||
allow non-free, patent implementing or non-GPL compatible plugins to be
|
||||
bundled with GStreamer and your applications, in order to make sure that
|
||||
as many vendors as possible go with GStreamer instead of less free
|
||||
solutions. This in turn we hope and think will let GStreamer be a
|
||||
vehicle for wider use of free formats like the
|
||||
[Xiph.org](http://www.xiph.org/) formats.
|
||||
|
||||
If you do decide that you want to allow for non-free plugins to be used
|
||||
with your application you have a variety of choices. One of the simplest
|
||||
is using licenses like LGPL, MPL or BSD for your application instead of
|
||||
the GPL. Or you can add a exceptions clause to your GPL license stating
|
||||
that you except GStreamer plugins from the obligations of the GPL.
|
||||
|
||||
A good example of such a GPL exception clause would be, using the Totem
|
||||
video player project as an example:
|
||||
|
||||
*The developers of the Totem video player hereby grants permission for
|
||||
non-GPL compatible GStreamer plugins to be used and distributed together
|
||||
with GStreamer and Totem. This permission is above and beyond the
|
||||
permissions granted by the GPL license by which Totem is covered. If you
|
||||
modify this code, you may extend this exception to your version of the
|
||||
code, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so,
|
||||
delete this exception statement from your version.*
|
||||
|
||||
Our suggestion among these choices is to use the LGPL license, as it is
|
||||
what resembles the GPL most and it makes it a good licensing fit with
|
||||
the major GNU/Linux desktop projects like GNOME and KDE. It also allows
|
||||
you to share code more openly with projects that have compatible
|
||||
licenses. As you might deduce, pure GPL licensed code without the
|
||||
above-mentioned clause is not re-usable in your application under a GPL
|
||||
plus exception clause unless you get the author of the pure GPL code to
|
||||
allow a relicensing to GPL plus exception clause. By choosing the LGPL,
|
||||
there is no need for an exception clause and thus code can be shared
|
||||
freely between your application and other LGPL using projects.
|
||||
|
||||
We have above outlined the practical reasons for why the GStreamer
|
||||
community suggest you allow non-free plugins to be used with your
|
||||
applications. We feel that in the multimedia arena, the free software
|
||||
community is still not strong enough to set the agenda and that blocking
|
||||
non-free plugins to be used in our infrastructure hurts us more than it
|
||||
hurts the patent owners and their ilk.
|
||||
|
||||
This view is not shared by everyone. The [Free Software
|
||||
Foundation](http://www.fsf.org) urges you to use an unmodified GPL for
|
||||
your applications, so as to push back against the temptation to use
|
||||
non-free plug-ins. They say that since not everyone else has the
|
||||
strength to reject them because they are unethical, they ask your help
|
||||
to give them a legal reason to do so.
|
||||
|
||||
[LGPL]: http://www.fsf.org/licenses/lgpl.html
|
|
@ -135,4 +135,5 @@ index.md
|
|||
plugin-development/appendix/licensing-advisory.md
|
||||
plugins.md
|
||||
splitup.md
|
||||
licensing.md
|
||||
rtp.md
|
||||
|
|
Loading…
Reference in a new issue