[Bug 725937] Bindings are AGPL 3 licensed

[GStreamer (bugzilla.gnome.org)]

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725937
  GStreamer | gst-sharp | git

--- Comment #5 from Sebastian Dröge (slomo) <slomo at coaxion.net> 2014-03-09 08:40:16 UTC ---
Thanks for the detailed explanation Nicolas :) Some further remarks...

> The second
> issue, is that each person to who you already granted LGPL right on this
> software are automatically granted the right to distribute again (this is what
> LGPL is about). Hence, the request is not required, as long as I make sure to
> download banshee source code first.

Yes, see also the previous discussion on #gstreamer and especially what
"derivative work" in the context of copyright law means.

> The first question I would ask is why do we care about the use of this software
> on server. Isn't it a marginal use of GStreamer and GStreamer Sharp today ?

Their concern was about companies not giving back changes AFAIU from the IRC
discussion, however the LGPL already does that.

> My other concern is around the patent clause, it's very unsafe to distribute
> gstreamer-sharp, gstreamer and any patented codec all together for a patent
> holder. Even the fact that most of us uses the + variant is a problem to some
> of them. Companies in the the streaming industry do own patents, and have to
> play that game. If we use licences that clearly put at risk their patents, they
> will go back into using proprietary software (and raise the appliance price).

Ack, also see license exceptions in GPL software like totem because of this.

> Now, you'll come up with the offer to give commercial licence. This indeed may
> solve the problem, though I don't think it is coherent with the licensing
> scheme of GStreamer.

There are multiple problems with this:
a) Each exception requires all copyright holders to agree. They solved this by
requiring all contributions to be MIT licensed and only the overall thing to be
AGPL licensed. While this seems to be ok legally, it's almost like a copyright
assignment agreement, and nobody excepts this when contributing patches to a
GStreamer project. You will have to make explicitly sure that everybody
providing a patch is ok with providing it with a more liberal license than the
software for which it is.
b) Each exception requires all copyright holders to agree. Good luck if one of
you disappears for whatever reason.
c) Companies don't read LICENSE files. They see "AGPL" and run away.
d) The LICENSE file does not even mention the conditions for which you grant a
license exception. When are you doing this, what do you require from people?
Especially, is it non-discriminatory or do you only grant exceptions to
companies you like?

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