[vlc-devel] close source plugin for vlc

[Michael Gao]

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 13:23 -0700, Dan Fandrich wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 02:51:07PM -0500, Michael Gao wrote:
> > - Neuros project is under GPLv2, however the video codec running on DSP
> > is not, nor is the ARM side codec supporting code (so called Codec
> > Engine). So in a nutshell, I am looking at a VLC plugin structured in
> > the following way,
> > 
> > Neuros-VLC-Plugin    (NVP)   --- license TBD
> >       |
> > TI Codec Engine Lib  (TCEL)  --- proprietary binary
> >       |
> > DSP side video Codec         --- proprietary binary
> > 
> > - NVP uses VLC/LibVLC plugins API for sure, also it uses TCEL APIs in
> > order to fulfill the codec plugin functionality (which then eventually
> > routes data back and forth with DSP side Codec). If we ship LGPLed NVP,
> > and also proprietary TCEL, would that be ok with VLC?
> 
> That's exactly the kind of RPC scenario I suggested.  Since there's no
> way to link the DSP code into the VLC module, I can't see how anyone could
> claim that it has to be GPL. The TCEL component, though, IMHO would have to
> be GPL compatible.
> 
> Surely, there can't be anything of real interest in there.  Can you 
> convince TI to open source the TCEL component, or reverse engineer it?

Well, believe it or not, I am still working to get authorization to
release TCEL binary and accompany headers to public. So I imagine
convincing TI to release TCEL to be GPL compatible isn't going to be
easy. But you never know. ;-)


-- 
Michael Gao
Neuros Technology-Open Consumer Electronics
http://developer.neurostechnology.com