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.

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  - tutorials/qt-tutorials.md [tpm: this should all be rewritten from scratch with qmlglsink; QtGStreamer is outdated and unmaintained, we should not promote it]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:
 
@@ -51,12 +33,6 @@ 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

markdown/licensing.md

@@ -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

sitemap.txt

@@ -135,4 +135,5 @@ index.md
 			plugin-development/appendix/licensing-advisory.md
 	plugins.md
 	splitup.md
+	licensing.md
 	rtp.md