GPL and Third Party

[bungle]

I was looking into some transcoding things and noticed the FFmpeg plugin in the gbpvr "Third Party" directory. FFMpeg is GPL'ed, but it seems that GB-PVR is using it via command line, which, according to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html...ggregation, seems okay. However, Deinterlace only has the source included, which makes me wonder whether this code is included in GB-PVR, either built in or called as a library. If so, GB-PVR can only be released as GPL code, too. (GPL is pretty viral that way.) Also, I didn't see any plugins that indicated they were GPL, but if they were that also wouldn't be allowed with a closed-source GB-PVR (LGPL plugins should be, I think). I'm no expert, but I do have to deal with this stuff at work (Java developer), and it can be tricky, but a violation wouldn't be a good thing.

[sub]

I'm pretty careful with licenses, so I'm pretty sure there is nothing GB-PVR which violates any licenses.

That old version of deinterlace that is included is actually covered by the LGPL, and GB-PVR is able to use it in its original library form (Deinterlace.ax, also included in SageTV by the way). I have made no changes to this library, and I am not required by this license to provide any source code for the rest of GB-PVR. See comments from the deinterlace author about this old version being LGPL: http://www.dscaler.org/phpBB/viewtopic.p...light=lgpl

I included this in the GB-PVR distribution when I first introduced the live preview mode of live TV and needed a way to deinterlace the picture. In the maintenance release about two weeks later I introduced a new method which superceeds this (encoder pass through). At that stage I could have removed it, but decide to leave it in to give users another option. If you search the forum, you'll probably fail to find a single person using this deinterlacer.

Also, I didn't see any plugins that indicated they were GPL, but if they were that also wouldn't be allowed with a closed-source GB-PVR (LGPL plugins should be, I think). I'm no expert, but I do have to deal with this stuff at work (Java developer), and it can be tricky, but a violation wouldn't be a good thing.

I'm very aware of this aspect of the GPL, but I see it this way: If someone (as a separate individual) writes a Photoshop plugin, and says "this plugin is hereby covered by the GPL license", do you think Adobe are going to feel obliged to accept a change of license, and to release the source code to Photoshop? no...

[Jere_Jones]

That was the exact reason I stopped developing comskip. The decoder in comskip is GPL'd so I had to write one from scratch so I could keep any of my detection methods a "trade secret".

Which makes me wonder why erik's source code isn't available. Erik, do you still use the libmpeg2 decoder?

Jere

[bungle]

That old version of deinterlace that is included is actually covered by the LGPL, and GB-PVR is able to use it in its original library form (Deinterlace.ax, also included in SageTV by the way).

Okay, I thought the included license file was GPL. LGPL clearly allows this.

I'm very aware of this aspect of the GPL, but I see it this way: If someone (as a separate individual) writes a Photoshop plugin, and says "this plugin is hereby covered by the GPL license", do you think Adobe are going to feel obliged to accept a change of license, and to release the source code to Photoshop? no...

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html...GPLPlugins
Probably not, so that seems like a strange requirement of the GPL. I don't really know how Adobe would get around this, other than requiring via the plugin SDK that you can't use GPL or something, or having a license query mechanism plugins must support so the main app can at least ask what license a plugin is and possible refuse to load it. I suspect mostly that's such a fringe GPL issue nobody cares.

Sounds like things are cool. I didn't intend to sound accusatory (if I did), just thought I'd bring it up since I saw those. GPL is a pain.

[sub]

I don't really know how Adobe would get around this...

The point is, Adobe dont have to get around this. Instead, it is actually the plugin author at fault. They cant actually cover their plugin under the GPL since they have no rights to change the license of the work they do not own. The could add an explicit exclusion for the app they intend to plug into (ie, saying 'this plugin is covered by the GPL, but grants rights for it also be used in non-GPL app X').