Hello!
Some time ago Mark initiated a discussion about Lame's license. At the
moment Lame is fully GPL which involves some problems.
First of all since all parts of Lame are GPL the usage of header files
included ofr use of Lame as any sort of DLL for other programs will force
those programs to use the GPL too. That is the way Richard Stallman intented
to enforce the use of the GPL on as many programs as possible.
But that is bad for programs that have to be under non disclosure for some
reasons.
To speak frankly I have contact to a German comany that developed a portable
MP3 player with Linux support. They are forced to keep the sources for the
up-download program secret but want to include an decent encoder into the
package. They have NO PROBLEM at all to give full credit for Lame and even
include the sources in their distribution but they cannot give away the
sources for their part of the software.
What would be solution seems to split the licensing into two parts:
If Lame is compiled as a DLL then the LGPL applies.
If Lame is compiled as a standalone program then GPL applies.
Or the header files would have to become completely free in order to
protect derived work from becoming GPLed too.
Why I ask this again is the fact that this company also has a licensing
aggreement for MP3 encoders. This way we could legalize Lame, i.e. every
Lame user could finally buy a legal Lame license!
This is rediculous I know because we would have to buy a license for a
program we developed ourselves but that how patends strike back ;(
OK. Any comments are welcome!
CU
nils
PS: This company is currently putting together a new CD distribution so if
we could get the licensing straight we could have Lame on their next CD!
--
Nils Faerber (Linux Nils) eMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Student of computer science http://www.si.unix-ag.org/~nils/
Unix user group, University of Siegen, Germany
Siegen ... the arctic rain forest!
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