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LGPL or BSD-Style License for Media Codecs?
"More specifically, the nature of many
embedded systems force them to be bound
by the stringent requirements of
Section 6 the LGPL. In some cases, dynamic
linkage is not possible, ruling out
6(b), or causing the terms of the FLAC
library to come into conflict with
other proprietary libraries. In other
cases, it simply is not possible to
provide an environment, according to
6(a), where the user can re-link with a
different copy of the library.
What are my options? I could stick to
my guns, which might limit the adoption
of the format, or change the license.
I know Vorbis uses the BSD license, but
I feel strongly about modifications
that are useful for others going back
into the free code base. Perhaps there
is another middle-ground license that
could preserve the Freedom of the code
in these cases? Or maybe I am not interpreting
the verbiage of the LGPL correctly?
Can't I have my cake and eat it too?"
Of course, contributers could agree to let their contributions be dual-licensed as well, but it strikes me as unfair that you'd get paid by proprietary licensees for those contributions and the contributors get nothing. This would discourage dual-licensed contributions and lead to a license-based fork soon enough. This would be less of a problem, I suppose, if you received no compensation from proprietary licenses, but that would be unfair for you.
There is a way out, though, that would (I think) let you GPL the code, and still be able to use it in proprietary products, but it is one hell of a kludge, and relies on a fair amount of trampoline code.
The GPL requires all statically, and depending on who you ask, dynamically (RMS, of course, says "yes, dynamically too" [my paraphrase]), linked code to be GPL if the result is distributed (an exception is made for libraries normally provided with the O/S, but what is O/S and what is app gets sticky in an embedded environment). However, non-complex communication with non-GPL code via pipes or sockets is O.K. "Non-complex" here is a matter of interpretation, but a classic server or filter utility is generally fine.
It strikes me that a codec can be interpreted as a filter, or simple server, in a loop-backed TCP/IP networked environment, so this could work. Is this overkill? Sure, but it would avoid the licensing issue completely: embedded systems could just ship with the source. I suppose that even that would not be necessary if the system were ordered on-line -- then an FTP server would suffice.
From a technical standpoint, this does introduce a lot of pressure on the embedded side: you need a whole TCP/IP stack and ROM and RAM tend to be precious in such systems. The overhead of packetizing and unpacketizing will require a bit of a beefier CPU to boot. I tend to think that even the smallest embedded systems today could handle that, but it is a concern. Of course, the network type the sockets use doesn't have to be AF_INET, permitting some short-cuts.
As a bonus, the pipe- or socket-based codec would be useful in a processing stream on non-embedded systems -- if you provided a traditional library instead, someone would quickly write such a filter (in the Unix sense, not the audio sense) app anyway.
You could've hired me.
Charge them a reasonable one-time relicensing fee that gives them an non-exclusive unlimited license to the code base with the exception that they may not patent any algorithms derived from the codebase. Also make sure the price is reasonable and small.
You can keep the main release LGPL, and anytime you take on a new code contributor ask them to agree to a release saying that FLAC may be privately relicensed upon those specific terms above and that all proceeds will go towards the development of FLAC.
So you can eat your cake and have it too. And if the company comes back wanting a license to a more recent version of the code- which has been evolving with LGPL contributions, then they can pay another one-time relicensing fee (a form of recurring funding if development keeps up)
Now this probably wont get you as wide distribution as a BSD license, because of the small hassle, but its the next best thing if you want to keep your copyleft. And your guaranteed to get compensated by anyone who wants to develop FLAC, either with LGPL code or hard cash.
Although it would be nice, this is probably not going to be as easy as you suggest.
The problem is that FLAC is an open source project hosted on SourceForge. As such, it is probably very likely that the project owner has accepted code from various contributors. This means that unless these contributors have explicitly granted him the copyright ownership of their code, he is in no position to re-license it.
At this point, he has two options:
1 - Replace all contributed code with his own; and do so without infringing on the anyone's copyright.
2 - Get everyone who contributed to grant him copyright ownership. Which, depending on how many people contributed, can be quite difficult.
I've always liked this idea for making money from Free software. You basically charge only those people who have no intention of giving back to the community. Unfortunately, unless you have planned ahead, it can be pretty difficult to pull off.
Good luck, buddy.