[Ffmpeg-devel] overall license review - adding proper license headers

[Rich Felker]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 05:38:24PM +0200, Ivo wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 September 2006 16:17, Benjamin Larsson wrote:
> > Diego Biurrun skrev:
> > > [...]
> > > I'll ask you again, just in case: Are you willing to relicense the code
> > > as LGPL?
> > >
> > > Judging from what you have written so far the answer is probably no. 
> > > In this case we should go back to plain GPL on that file IMO.
> > >   [...]
> >
> > I dissagre to place it under GPL only, just extend the wording so it's
> > less likely to missunderstand it. Otherwise you will remove a feature
> > from the LGPL version of ffmpeg.
> 
> IANAL, but AFAIK it is illegal to add clauses to the LGPL, except for 
> geographical distribution limitations. The license text is copyrighted and 
> may not be changed or extended with extra clauses. This is on purpose, to 
> avoid having tons of slightly varying and possibly incompatible LGPL 
> variations around. So something is either LGPL or it's not. Something can 
> not be LGPL for just one project and GPL elsewhere.
> 
> As the author/copyrightholder does not want to license his code under the 
> LGPL, the only valid option is the GPL.

The corrected wording would not include the word "LGPL" at all. It was
a mistake to associate this exception/duallicense with LGPL since it
has nothing to do with it.

Rich