[vlc-devel] Re: Help wanted for small (?) VLC development job

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le mardi 22 mai 2007, Jean-Paul Saman a écrit :
> > We do already have several plugins loading external non-free
> > libraries: Quicktime, DirectMedia Object (not counting that VLC
> > runs on many non-GPL C runtimes).
>
> DMO, ActiveX, DirectX, DirectShow are part of the operating system
> and therefor don't count as derivative work.

That's pure invention. No such notions in the GPL. This is legal not 
because it is part of the operating system but because it is not 
provided along the VLC binaries (and in fact not even by the same 
entities). The "operating system" exception applies "unless that 
component itself accompanies the executable". That's why we cannot ship 
the Windows 98 Unicode support with VLC even though it arguably is part 
of the Win98 OS.

> > And we have the ActiveX (and Mozilla) plugins that makes it easy to
> > use VLC through non-GPL software, such as Microsoft Internet
> > Explorer. I understand that there might some subtleties with MSIE
> > not being distributed along VLC however.

> In the ActiveX plugin case VLC uses/exports an interface technology
> that hasn't been specifically created for use with VLC and therefor
> don't count as derivative work.

Being run-time linkable with VLC does not mean it's a derivative work, 
regardless of the (non-)commodity of the API/ABI. Now one may argue 
that a program using LibVLC API is a derivative work of VLC (I must 
say, I don't know IPR laws well enough), but why the other way around? 
It would rather be the glue plugin that be a derivative work of both 
the non-free codec *and* VLC. And hence subject to copyrights license 
for derivative works of both of them, if any as far as the codec is 
concerned.

As J-B noted already, if the API/ABI is clearly not VLC-idiosynchrasic, 
I must admit I do not see any legal issues (regardless of would-be 
moral ones).

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/

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