GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 149536
licensing problems in gst-plugins
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
The following plugins contain GPL code: monoscope, jack, rtjpeg, rtp, synaesthesia, vbidec, dvdreadsrc, system_encode, gstidct, mpeg1sys, and gstvideo. gst-inspect claims that monoscope and rtp are LGPL, but this is wrong. gst-plugins is not supposed to contain GPL'ed code. These plugins should be removed or rewritten or relicensed. Also, auparse claims to be GPL when you run gst-inspect, but only seems to contain LGPL code. It probably should be changed to say LGPL when you run gst-inspect. Same for textoverlay (in ext/pango).
monoscope: fixed jack: sent email to wingo about relicensing rtjpeg: correct rtp: fixed synaesthesia: correct vbidec: correct dvdreadsrc: correct, but talk to vektor about relicensing gst code system_encode: fixed idct: fixed mpeg1sys: correct gstvideo: fixed auparse: fixed textoverlay: fixed
Thanks. I think that gst-inspect is now showing the right information about the plugins reported above. However, my understanding is that all GPL based plugins will need to be removed from gst-plugins or rewritten to be LGPL by the 0.9 release. Also, in further research, I notice the following: + ogg, vorbis, gsttheora, speex all have BSD licenses + gsm, faac, festival, jpeg, nas and snapshot all use free licenses which are not GPL or LPGL. + ximagesink and xvimagesink are under the MIT X11 / X Consortium license Should gst-inspect reflect the license of the library, which the user inherits rather than the license of the plugin? For LGPL'ed plugins that use GPL'ed libraries, these plugins report "GPL" to let the user know the plugin licensing. After all, if the goal is to eventually have all plugins in gst-plugins be LGPL, it isn't very interesting for them all to report "LGPL" when that happens.
The code for the plugins is LGPL, and thus the runtime license of the plugin is LGPL as well. The string does not represent the library license; it represents the plugin runtime license.
Ronald: This probably needs to hashed out a bit further. First of all, there are some plugins in gst-plugins that are derived from GPL code, and contain a GPL license. These are the plugins that are GPL'ed: monoscope, jack, rtjpeg, tp, synaesthesia, vbidec, dvdreadsrc, system_encode, and mpeg1sys Currently, all plugins in gst-plugins that are LGPL but make use of a GPL library are marked as GPL, so that when you run gst-inpsect, they say GPL. Since it seems that an eventual goal of gst-plugins is to make all the plugins LGPL, I'm not sure what the value of gst-inspect is if it says LGPL for all of them. Personally, I think it is more interesting and useful for gst-inspect to tell you what license you inherit by using the plugin as opposed to the the licensing of the plugin itself. However, I don't really care which way we decide to do it. But we should decide, and make it consistant. Currently, it isn't consistant. Some plugins tell you what license they inherit and some don't.
It is completely consistent. The license field is the effective license of the binary plugin.
I don't see why this is a blocker. It needs fixing, sure, but there's no point in making it hold up the release, this bug was just as present in previous releases. Let's just get through this ASAP regardless.
This is already fixed. There are still GPL plugins, but that's not going to be fixed anyway.
Company suggested that I file this bug as a 0.9 blocker.
ok, PLEASE someone break this down for me. What EXACTLY is as yet not solved ?
My understanding, which could well be wrong, is that all GStreamer plugins shipped in gst-plugins should be under the LGPL license. My understanding is that it is not a problem for there to be LGPL'ed plugins that interface with GPL'ed libraries (such as the mad plugin). However, there are a number of plugins in gst-plugins that ship with a GPL'ed license. These plugins include: monoscope, jack, rtjpeg, tp, synaesthesia, vbidec, dvdreadsrc, system_encode, and mpeg1sys So to fix this bug, the above plugins would need to be removed, relicensed by their authors, or rewritten. As I've said before, I could be wrong about my understanding. Perhaps someone else can confirm whether or not this is necessary.
Quick look: * system_encode should be removed, it is superseeded by mplex. * rtjpeg never did anything and should thus be removed. * I'll rewrite dvdreadsrc sometime soon. * mpeg1sys appears superseeded by mpeg2enc? * monoscope, jack, rtp, synaesthesia, vbidec need to be moved outside the gst-plugins tarball if they are indeed GPL.
The plugins that I mentioned above contain at least one file with a GPL license in it. Perhaps, as has happened before, such files were simply given the wrong license and need to be fixed. The authors will need to be contacted if we want to relicense them.
There's no point in doing anything about this right now, since we've never committed to an LGPL-only gst-plugins during the 0.8 series. And at some point during 0.9, we'll do a massive gst-plugins rearrangement anyway.