[Matroska-general] License Form for TCME

[Christian HJ Wiesner]

Moritz Bunkus wrote:

>Heya,
>
>>Great !! I recommend to relicense under a L-GPL/QPL dual license then. 
>>Cyrius, Mosu : do you both agree ?
>>    
>>
>
>I don't understand...
>a) ... in which way the QPL differs from GPL and
>b) ... why we need two licenses.
>Mosu
>  
>
I was just talking about this on IRC in detail, and BBB confirmed there 
is use for the dual license.

The L-GPL makes us compatible with practically any OSS project under the 
sun. Thats great. On the other hand, it would also allow commercial apps 
to use libmatroska for free, as long as they stick to the rules for 
using L-GPL libs in closed software, i.e. :
- They distribute the library sourcecode, as well as modifications they 
made to it to be able to use it, together with their program
- They create object files which will allow the user of their software 
to update the library by themselves
Both is certainly feasible for them, but could be considered as a real 
pain in the ass by them, so they wont support matroska.

The QPL license would give them the chance to overcome those rules, and 
simply implement our libs into their programs, after we granted them the 
explicit right to do so. Of course you might now argue that this is well 
possible with L-GPL also, as we can relicense our code under whatever 
form we like to, so they can us it. The nice thing by doing this via 
QPL, as i see it,  is that those companies can automatically update 
their apps against our latest version of the libs ( if the modifications 
are released under QPL also, thats the control we have ), and we dont 
have to relicense new versions of the code for them all the time.

Does this make sense to you ?

Christian