Mise à jour de la base de données, veuillez patienter...

The FSF's License and Compliance Lab had previously written about the issues involved with VLC and Apple's App Store.

I first met the original group of VLC developers at the Solutions GNU/Linux conference in 2001. I had been an employee of FSF for about a year at the time, and I recall they were excited to tell the FSF about the project, and very proud that they'd used FSF's premier and preferred license (at the time): GPLv2-or-later.

What a difference a decade makes. I'm admittedly sad that VLC has (mostly) finished its process of relicensing some of its code under LGPLv2.1-or-later. While I have occasionally supported relicensing from GPL to LGPL, every situation is different and I think it should be analyzed carefully. In this case, I don't support VLC's decision to relicense the libVLC code.

The main reason to use the LGPL, as RMS put eloquently long ago, is for situations where there are many competitors and developers would face serious difficulty gaining adoption of a strong-copylefted solution. Another more recent reason that I've discovered to move to weaker licenses (and this was the case with Qt) is to normalize away some of the problems of proprietary relicensing. However, neither reason applies to libVLC.

VLC is the most popular media player for desktop computers. I know many proprietary operating system users who love VLC and it's the first application they download to a new computer. It is the standard for desktop video viewing, and does a wonderful job advocating the value of software freedom to people who live in a primarily proprietary software world.

Meanwhile, the VideoLan Organization's press statements have been quite vague on their reasons for changing, saying only that "this change was motivated to match the evolution of the video industry and to spread the VLC engine as a multi-platform open-source multimedia engine and library." The only argument that I've seen discussed heavily in public for relicensing is ostensibly to address the widely publicized incompatibility of copyleft licensing with various App Store agreements. Yet, those incompatibilities still exist with the LGPL or, indeed, any true copyleft license. The incompatibilities of Apple's terms are so strict that they make it absolutely impossible to comply simultaneously with any copyleft and Apple's terms at the same time. Other similar terms aren't much better, even with Google's Play Store (— its terms are incompatible with any copyleft license if the project has many copyright holders).

So, I'm left baffled: do the VLC community actually believes the LGPL would solve that problem? (To be clear, I haven't seen any official statement where the VideoLAN Organization claims that relicensing will solve that issue, but others speculate that it's the reason.) Regardless, I don't think it's a problem worth solving. The specters of “Application Store” terms and conditions are something to fight against wholly in an uncompromising way. The copyleft licensing incompatibilities with such terms are actually a signaling mechanism to show us that these stores are working against software freedom actively. I hope developers will reject deployment to these application stores entirely.

Therefore, I'm left wondering what VLC seeks to do here. Do they want proprietary application interfaces that use their core libraries? If so, I'm left wondering why: VLC is already so popular that they could pull adopters toward software freedom by using the strong copyleft of GPL on libVLC. It seems to me they're making a bad trade-off to get only marginally more popular by allowing some proprietary derivatives. OTOH, I guess I should cut my losses on this point and be glad they stuck with any copyleft at all and didn't go all the way to a permissive license.

Finally, I do think there's one valuable outcome shown by this relicensing effort (which Gerv pointed out first): it is possible to relicense a multi-copyright-held code based. It's a lot of work, but it can be done. It appears to me that VLC did a responsible and reasonable job on that part, even if I disagree strongly with the need for such a job here in the first place.

Update (2012-11-30): It's been pointed out to me that VLC has relegated certain code from VLC into a library called libVLC, and that's the code that's been relicensed. I've made today changes to the post above to clarify that issue.

This article is licensed licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .

Join the FSF and friends on Friday November 30th, from 12:30pm to 2pm EDT (17:30 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today!

The FSF's License and Compliance Lab had previously written about the issues involved with VLC and Apple's App Store.

I first met the original group of VLC developers at the Solutions GNU/Linux conference in 2001. I had been an employee of FSF for about a year at the time, and I recall they were excited to tell the FSF about the project, and very proud that they'd used FSF's premier and preferred license (at the time): GPLv2-or-later.

What a difference a decade makes. I'm admittedly sad that VLC has (mostly) finished its process of relicensing under LGPLv2.1-or-later. While I have occasionally supported relicensing from GPL to LGPL, every situation is different and I think it should be analyzed carefully. In this case, I don't support VLC's decision to relicense.

The main reason to use the LGPL, as RMS put eloquently long ago, is for situations where there are many competitors and developers would face serious difficulty gaining adoption of a strong-copylefted solution. Another more recent reason that I've discovered to move to weaker licenses (and this was the case with Qt) is to normalize away some of the problems of proprietary relicensing. However, neither reason applies to VLC.

VLC is the most popular media player for desktop computers. I know many proprietary operating system users who love VLC and it's the first application they download to a new computer. It is the standard for desktop video viewing, and does a wonderful job advocating the value of software freedom to people who live in a primarily proprietary software world.

Meanwhile, the VideoLan Organization's press statements have been quite vague on their reasons for changing, saying only that "this change was motivated to match the evolution of the video industry and to spread the VLC engine as a multi-platform open-source multimedia engine and library." The only argument that I've seen discussed heavily in public for relicensing is ostensibly to address the widely publicized incompatibility of copyleft licensing with various App Store agreements. Yet, those incompatibilities still exist with the LGPL or, indeed, any true copyleft license. The incompatibilities of Apple's terms are so strict that they make it absolutely impossible to comply simultaneously with any copyleft and Apple's terms at the same time. Other similar terms aren't much better, even with Google's Play Store (— its terms are incompatible with any copyleft license if the project has many copyright holders).

So, I'm left baffled: does the VLC community actually believe the LGPL would solve that problem? (To be clear, I haven't seen any official statement where the VideoLAN Organization claims that relicensing will solve that issue, but others speculate that it's the reason.) Regardless, I don't think it's a problem worth solving. The specters of “Application Store” terms and conditions are something to fight against wholly in an uncompromising way. The copyleft licensing incompatibilities with such terms are actually a signaling mechanism to show us that these stores are working against software freedom actively. I hope developers will reject deployment to these application stores entirely.

Therefore, I'm left wondering what VLC seeks to do here. Do they want proprietary application interfaces that use their core libraries? If so, I'm left wondering why: VLC is already so popular that they could pull adopters toward software freedom by using the strong copyleft of GPL. It seems to me they're making a bad trade-off to get only marginally more popular by allowing some proprietary derivatives. OTOH, I guess I should cut my losses on this point and be glad they stuck with any copyleft at all and didn't go all the way to a permissive license.

Finally, I do think there's one valuable outcome shown by this relicensing effort (which Gerv pointed out first): it is possible to relicense a multi-copyright-held code based. It's a lot of work, but it can be done. It appears to me that VLC did a responsible and reasonable job on that part, even if I disagree strongly with the need for such a job here in the first place.

This article is licensed licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .

On Cyber Monday, hordes of Americans will take to the Internet in search of the newest gadgets to bestow upon their loved ones.

Most of these "gifts" are trojan horses that will spy on their recipients, prevent them from doing what they want with their device, or maybe even block access to their favorite books or music.

The Free Software Foundation is proud to introduce the antidote: our 2012 Giving Guide. The Giving Guide features gifts that will not only make your recipients jump for joy, these gifts will also protect their user freedom.

Here are some of the gift ideas based on the 2012 Giving Guide:

• Help your mom, dad, brother or sister upgrade to a laptop that comes preinstalled with GNU/Linux.
• Get yourself a Lulzbot AO-100 3D printer and make 3D-printed stocking stuffers for the whole family.
• Give a membership to the Free Software Foundation, or make a donation on behalf of a friend to another worthy organization, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Creative Commons.

You can give copies of the Giving Guide to friends and family to encourage them to get you gifts that respect your freedom. And as you do your own holiday shopping, think about giving the gift of free software, and the hardware that supports it, to your loved ones.

If you plan to "give freely" this year, shout it from the rooftops! Please share the Giving Guide with your networks on identi.ca and other social media sites you use.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday November 16th, from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode. While these meetings will continue, this Friday will be our volunteer Andrew's last time running them, so lets make it a big one!

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today!