License and copyright of GStreamer examples

[Fedor Lyakhov]

Thanks for clarifications!

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Tim-Philipp Müller <t.i.m at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 02:34 +0400, Fedor Lyakhov wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>> I want to use GStreamer examples (e.g.
>> <src>/tests/examples/helloworld/) as test applications of my own
>> project (called Melange), which is licensed and distributed under GNU
>> LGPL. I want to modify and re-distribute the examples - but I cannot
>> find copyright notice there, nor the license. (I want to distribute
>> both slightly modified and substantially modified files eventually...)
>>
>> There is a list of authors for GStreamer manual
>> (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/manual/html/index.html),
>> and indication that it is distributed under Open Publication License,
>> v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at
>> http://www.opencontent.org/opl.shtml). Still this information lacks
>> copyright notice (at least the years are missing). Also AFAIK examples
>> aren't fully published inside the manual - rather excerpts from them
>> (at least the helloworld example - as compared to the one inside
>> /tests/examples/helloworld). Moreover, these examples seem to be tests
>> of GStreamer at the same time - that's why I hope they're
>> LGPL-licensed as well.
>>
>> So my questions are
>> 1. Under what license are the examples published? (LGPL or OPL?)
>
> I think you can assume that code examples without license headers are
> licensed at least under LGPL v2 or later. We generally aim to license
> example code more liberally even, so people can copy'n'paste it into
> their own possibly proprietary code as well. There may be no header, but
> there's a COPYING file in the top-level directory.
>
>> 2. What are the copyright notes there? (authors and years are needed)
>
> IANAL, but I don't think the copyright notices are actually mandatory.
> 'git blame' suggests that Stefan Kost rewrote the hello world example
> almost entirely in 2011, in case you do feel like you want the name of
> the original author in there.
>
>
>> 3. Can I modify and re-distribute them as part of LGPL-licensed
>> project under LGPL?
>
> Yes.
>
>
>> 4. How should I write new copyright notice in my modified files?Will
>> following be acceptable:
>>
>> Copyright <XXXX-YYYY> <GStreamer author1>
>> Copyright <XXXX-YYYY> <GStreamer author2>
>> Copyright 2014 Fedor Lyakhov
>>
>> This file is part of Melange.
>>
>> Melange is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
>> it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
>> the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
>> (at your option) any later version.
>>
>> Melange is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>> but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>> MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
>> GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
>>
>> You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
>> along with Melange. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
>> .
>> This file was derived from helloworld.c test/example of GStreamer framework.
>
> That looks fine to me. I don't think it is required that you say what
> you based it on, esp. in the case of example code made for
> copy'n'pasting purposes.
>
>  Cheers
>   -Tim
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gstreamer-devel mailing list
> gstreamer-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/gstreamer-devel



-- 
Best regards,
Fedor