[vlc-devel] Plugins license compatibility

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 11:59:36AM +0100, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote :
> It seems that some packagers are not paying due attention to licensing
> constraints when building VLC. VLC is distributed under GNU GPL version 2
> or later. However, some plugins depend on libraries that are licensed
> solely under (L)GPL version 2. Conversely, some plugins depend on libraries
> that are with GPL version 3, but not GPL version 2. To my understanding,
> you _CANNOT_ mix both categories in the same binary distribution.

> I am not aware of any exhaustive list. Checking licenses is the job of
> packagers, not mine. But at least, we are aware of the following cases:
> 
> - taglib meta plugin:
>   taglib requires GPL version 2.
> 
> - dirac codec plugin:
>   dirac requires GPL version 2 (but schroedinger does not).
> 
> - access_smb access plugin (except on Windows):
>   libsmbclient requires GPL version 3 in recent versions.
> 
> - access_scp access plugin:
>   libssh requires GPL version 3 (due to BSD advertisement clause).

Avcodec compiled with opencore falls on the GPLv3 part too.


-- 
Jean-Baptiste Kempf
http://www.jbkempf.com/