BSD and GPL

Hi all,

I’m (almost) back and i must admit that I was expecting this license problem. :frowning:



Under this link http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#TOCGPLCompatibleLicenses



I saw that :



GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses
.....

The modified BSD license.

This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the advertising clause. It is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.

If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, the modified BSD license is a reasonable choice. However, it is risky to recommend use of ``the BSD license'', because confusion could easily occur and lead to use of the flawed original BSD license. To avoid this risk, you can suggest the X11 license instead. The X11 license and the revised BSD license are more or less equivalent.



My question to native english speakers : doesn't that solve the compatibility problem.

If doesn't : I tried to find mp3 decoding specs without any result. All I found is how to decode mpeg frame headers but not the core specs (to decompress data) . If someone has a link or a doc I am ok to write jme's own mp3decoder.

afaik, you CANNOT en/decode mp3, without a license from Thompson Multimedia (or whatever they’re called). Your best bet, and what most others are doing, is to use Ogg Vorbis instead.

Ouch, so it’s more a problem with MP3 than the loaders… Well, Arman, there is a great Ogg Vorbis tutorial on devmaster for OpenAL. Maybe we should go ahead and switch to an Ogg loader and dump MP3s altogether.



Nice picture by the way. Always cool to see what you guys look like. :slight_smile:

ARGH! :’(

Oki doki, so let’s go with ogg/vorbis.



<really_offtopic>

That was later in the “happy new year” party



http://perso.wanadoo.fr/armozc/Arman_psychopath.jpg



</really_offtopic>

Ok, that was one frightening picture of a drunken frenchman. :slight_smile:



I think ogg vorbis will be good in the long run anyways. Hopefully, it won’t be too much work to switch over.

"Arman" wrote:
My question to native english speakers : doesn't that solve the compatibility problem.

Compatible as in "your code" + "jME" + GPL code = GPL code, yes.

Compatible as in "your code" + "jME" + GLP code = non-GPL code, no.

It's still up in the air and being debated by the lawyers whether "your code" + LGPL in another jar = LGPL or whether it can = "your license"

The best way to handle LGPL-licensed code is to ask the LGPL owner what he thinks the license means.

There are sites out there that say "we provide these java jars with an LGPL license, and that means you can link non-LGPL code to it without making your own source GPL/LGPL". And there are those that say the opposite. The licenser has the final say, not the FSF, fortunately. And anyone who released java code under LGPL expecting it to be non-viral is unlikely to complain if you treat it that way, no matter what FSF's lawyers declare. (And many will dual-license if the issue is pointed to them.)

-Mike

this is getting all a bit too much. Mp3 for me is dead, Ogg Vorbis is the better thing. Even if we do ask the owner, its going to be a tangled web which we will be relieing on.



My 2 pence

He makes a good point though. Specifically, we need to be real careful about what 3rd party apps we combine jME with (considering we are considering one if we get rid of AWT for image loading). Because the license is so ambiguous with *GPL licenses, we should probably stay completely away from them. I would consider BSD or MIT only. Otherwise, keep it "in house".