Parts of VLC are now re-licensed under the LGPL

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/104597325891170264649/104597325891170264649/posts/fhYhcagWBp6

by etix • 15 years ago

45 20 15 years ago

plus.google.com

The article fails to mention why this change happened, and what motivated it.

Presumably because developers wanted, or VLC wanted developers to be able to use libvlc and libvlccore in their programs without being forced to use the GPL.

albertzeyer• 15 years ago

Some more interesting information:

http://www.videolan.org/press/lgpl.html

This change was motivated to match the evolution of the video industry and to spread the VLC engine as a multi-platform open-source multimedia engine and library.

Maybe another motivation was the licensing problem with the Apple App Store. This should be resolved with LGPL. (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/no-gpl-apps-for-apples...)

jbk4• 15 years ago

Apple Store was not the motivation: it requires the change of license of way more code than just libVLC, notably most of the decoders and demuxers modules, and this is not yet done.

Having more people using libVLC is important for us, though...

forrestthewoods2• 15 years ago

Is it possible to use LGPL on iOS to begin with? I've seen lots of debate on the subject but never a concrete answer. The requirement for users to be able to update to a newer version of the library has been the sticking point. I've sent a few e-mails to the FSF asking for clarification but have not gotten an answer. :(

hartror2• 15 years ago

Fantastic, in a recent review of media libraries I did libvlc looked very attractive. However the lack of LGPL prevented its inclusion in the final selection which was a shame.

Now of course we are 6 weeks down the track with a different library but we're a while off feature complete and if libvlc can do everything we need . . .

Decisions decisions.

jbk4• 15 years ago

And cases like this one are exactly the motivation of the change.

Contact me, if you want.

hartror2• 15 years ago

Thanks!

ldesegur2• 15 years ago

VLC is the biggest POS I have ever installed on my Mac (as far as I can remember.) Who cares about licensing and streaming when the app is not even able to keep with video playback on latest hardware. What a joke! Hideous UI, buried options (try removing color or reizing subtitles), even worse: skipping frames while zero tasks running on latest i7 with 8GB RAM and 7.2K HD (I've checked with top) !!! What a crap. So I said: VLC, go away! I switched to MPlayer and all of those issues went away from that very moment. Good riddance.

Maxious• 15 years ago

The problem with VLC on OSX is nobody wants to be the maintainer.

ldesegur2• 15 years ago

I browsed the net so much trying to fix these problems and never heard about this situation with Mac OS X. You got people out there who probably could contribute if they knew. Are you sure about this? The Mac OS X port is so bad, I would encourage VLC to scrap it until they can fix it, instead of giving false hopes to users.

Parts of VLC are now re-licensed under the LGPL

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