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VLC 2.0 released
Version 2.0
of the VLC media player, dubbed "Twoflower," is out. "With faster
decoding on multi-core,
GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably
professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC.
Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality
subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos. It supports many
new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental)."
(Log in to post comments)
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 19, 2012 3:14 UTC (Sun) by krakensden (subscriber, #72039) [Link]
Relicensing the core to LGPL seems like a positive move- I expect we'll see some interesting new frontends in the next year or three.
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 19, 2012 11:52 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Oh. That's a pity.
So, if we see any new frontends, there's now the risk that they'll be proprietary :-(
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 19, 2012 12:35 UTC (Sun) by LightDot (guest, #73140) [Link]
Well, I could envision some proprietary software might start using VLC as the backend, since their current back-end might be to expensive to maintain or too crappy to develop further.
But I can't imagine someone developing just the front-end and trying to market it. As a part of a bigger ecosystem, perhaps, but only the front-end... How would that pay off?
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 19, 2012 16:58 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
You bundle some additional functionality which is proprietary and unique and for Windows and Mac users and a lot of users might pay for it.
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 21, 2012 15:47 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
And that would either be trivial functionality, which should be easy for the free software world to replicate, or difficult functionality, which probably does deserve to be paid. Or something in between.
I fail to see a major problem here.
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 21, 2012 16:54 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I never said it is a problem but often it can be. For instance, some functionality is not difficult and is fairly easy but prohibited by local laws. However, fact of the matter is, the license change does allow the possibility and I was answering the OP on how one can be paid for this.
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 20, 2012 1:12 UTC (Mon) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
Don't feed the troll. coriordan lurks around here looking for opportunities to stretch the limits of relevance to evangelize everybody about the marvels of GPL3 and try to win converts to the Cult of Stallman (though he tends instead to frighten "potential converts" away).
It's a futile and useless waste of time trying to reason with him.
You're totally right that there's no real market for a commercial proprietary VLC frontend. But even if proprietary VLC frontends are made, they won't be in lieu of open-source ones. It's not like there are scores of people out there longing to make a VLC frontend who were going to say "shucks, I guess we'll have to open source all our code" but will now say "hurrah, we can keep it all closed."
The VLC folks decided back in 2007 when the GPL3 was released that they disliked it and wouldn't use it, and the switch from GPL2+ to LGPL 2.1+ is the logical way for them to follow through on their opinion. Wider use of libVLC will be a boon for both VLC and the wider open source multimedia world. It's a welcome move.
Rabid Posted Feb 20, 2012 10:24 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Who is the troll here? I seem to remember Ciarán doing quite a bit of good work for Free Software, particularly with regard to resisting software patents, and that benefits everyone with an interest in the field regardless of whether they prefer copyleft licensing or not.
Alongside the "I'm right, you're stupid" tone in recent discussions by the usual practitioners, it's precisely this kind of mud-slinging that is making this site less interesting to participate in. If you want to discuss the merits of any licensing change without coming across as "rabid" yourself, go right ahead, but please leave the childish labelling out of it.
It will be a sad day indeed when LWN joins various other sites in the gutter of name-calling and insult-littered argument. Please don't hasten its journey there.
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 20, 2012 19:39 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
I pointed out that third-party frontends were already possible. The only difference is that, by moving away from GPL, they won't all be free software now.
For example, proprietary packages that contain a video library can now stop working on their own library and rely on handouts from the VLC project.
Development of proprietary software gets more efficient, and VLC gets no code contributions. Why is that good for readers of LWN?
(But please only reply if you're going to stick to the standard of comment quality that makes LWN a good forum.)
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 20, 2012 19:55 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
I've seen at least one Mac application that uses VLC without any attempt at GPL compliance. The change only means that they can now do this legally. Do we know the authors' reasoning for the change? Perhaps they are just adapting to the reality of how their code was being used anyway.
In some sense, the worst situation to be in is where the "good guys" would like to use your code but can't because of your license, and the "bad guys" just use your code illegally. Think about it this way: are you likely to get more contributions back [e.g. bug-fixes] from someone who uses your GPL code illegally, or from someone who uses your LGPL code legally?
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 20, 2012 21:24 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
There are indeed some circumstances where LGPL is better, but they're rare. It'd be overly optimistic to presume that each case is one of the rare cases, and there's nothing on the announcement page to support the idea that this change is for the benefit of free software users.
In general, a change from GPL to LGPL is a loss, not something to celebrate.
The license is strictly the author's business Posted Feb 20, 2012 20:14 UTC (Mon) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
It doesn't matter whether it's good for LWN readers. It's the author's code, the author took the time to develop it and deal with feedback, and the author gets to choose the license.
Any comments which pretend otherwise are arrogance and elitism personified. NO ONE knows better than the author what the author wants, and NO ONE else gets a say in it.
The license is strictly the author's business Posted Feb 20, 2012 21:28 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
I didn't say that I know what the authors want.
I said this is probably bad for free software users.
You're right that the author can do what he likes with his code, but some choices are unfortunate for free software users. I care about free software users, thus my comment.
The license is strictly the author's business Posted Feb 20, 2012 23:13 UTC (Mon) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
It's true that the change to LGPL will enable proprietary frontends to be developed. But it will also enable GPLv3 or BSD-licensed frontends to be developed, something that was formerly impossible because of the GPLv2-only license.
Overall, this will reduce the amount of wheel reinvention and fragmentation, so I can't help but think of it as a positive step.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 11:32 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
It's was previously GPLv2+, so it was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 15:52 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
"Compatible with BSD" is a stretch. "Requiring BSD projects to release their software under the GPL" would be a more accurate way of putting that.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 16:42 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Anyone can combine BSD and GPL code (v2 or v3), and distribute the result. That's compatible.
The GPL parts say GPL, and the BSD parts stay BSD. Distributors have to comply with both sets of requirements.
10 more paragraphs could be added about the details, but the licences are 100% compatible.
(This will probably be my last post in this thread. I should get back to working on http://en.swpat.org )
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:26 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
And anyone who wants to build on top of the combination must use the GPL. Your careful language implies that it's a reciprocal relationship. It's not.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 22, 2012 12:44 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I don't think anything was implied about reciprocity. If you're building on a work, you have to go along with the conditions applied to that work. People sometimes make a big deal about how "generous" they are ("I attached as few conditions to my work as possible!"), but that simply isn't the aim of the GPL.
Technically, anyone who wants to build on top of the combination can use whichever GPL-compatible licence they like and wait for someone else to replace the GPL-licensed part under a licence they prefer. Usage of the GPL merely invites people to undertake a common activity within a framework that seeks to uphold specific properties of the resulting work.
There are all sorts of reasons why a project might switch to using more or less permissive licences - they may indicate a change in the way the interests of different groups of people are prioritised by the developers - but given the potential effects of such changes on end-users, I don't see anything wrong in voicing end-user concerns about it.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 1:10 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
The "standard of comment quality that makes LWN a good forum" excludes repetitive mindless drivel. We come here not only because it's less of a flamefest than other sites but because it usually has more intelligent discussion rather than wasting everybody's time by rehashing the same brainless argument fodder that people have been spewing for decades.
Everybody here has heard the merits of the Stallman kool-aid preached plenty of times, and either they drank it or they deliberately decided not to. By rehashing all the same old "GPL is the Only True License, LGPL is only a stepping stone in the Seven-Year Plan and anyone who advocates its use outside of that role is an enemy of the Party" propaganda you aren't going to convince anyone around here.
There are zero frontend projects that would have been open-source if libVLC had kept its old license but will now be closed. That argument is a total red herring. Further, since there are plenty of other video libraries out there, no other apps would have been enticed to use a GPL-compatible license just to be able to use libVLC either.
Contrary to your claim, anybody who uses libVLC will still have to release any modifications, and libVLC will have more users, so code contributions are a reason in the LGPL's favor. (Even MIT/BSD licensed libraries see most users contribute back their changes though in such a case it's not required.)
The only thing you said that has any semblance of truth about it is that being able to choose libVLC over other already-available video libraries might conceivably make life easier for some proprietary software developer out there. The horrors!
Choosing an unsuitable license and shooting yourself in the foot just to spite some hypothetical proprietary developer is not going to do anything to advance users' or developers' freedom.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 3:15 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
Whether it's the government deciding saccharin is bad for everybody or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs deciding what software I can use on my computer or coriordan deciding what license is best for someone else's software, the common thread is to unilaterally decide for other people, based on "I am ideologically pure".
I personally like GPLv2 and release what little software I do using it. But like every human endeavor, browbeating is more likely to put people off than get the desired results. Were I to make my licensing decisions today, I do not know if I would choose any version of the GPL, simply because of the increasingly shrill "I know what's good for you" attitude of the Stallman true believers. I tried, once, talking with Stallman about something very general, and was astonished at how rigid his thinking was and how rapidly the diatribes began -- GPL or be damned.
I believe most patches and fixes are submitted to projects because the patch author wants to help the main project and not maintain a private fork of the sources. The license has little to do with it. Even if someone does start by maintaining their own set of patches, at some point it gets to be too much hassle, and they merge at least most of their patches back in to the mainline. I myself have some patches for projects I use but the author doesn't want or because I simply can't contact them, and it's no picnic.
I believe that Google would be just as likely to submit fixes to Linux without the GPL as they do now, because they don't want to maintain a sea of patches for the rest of Android's life. Ideology and "do no evil" be damned -- it's easier and in their own best interests.
Harping upon what license authors choose for their software is beyond elite and arrogant. It is counter productive. Stallman is a genius in many ways, but his acolytes do no good for either him or the FSF by turning every discussion into an argy bargy on how holy the GPL is. Sneers at these choices or other licenses in general turns people off and leaves enough bad taste behind to deter ever using the one true license.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 5:11 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> I believe that Google would be just as likely to submit fixes to Linux without the GPL as they do now, because they don't want to maintain a sea of patches for the rest of Android's life. Ideology and "do no evil" be damned -- it's easier and in their own best interests.
I can't argue with the rest of your statement but I'm not really sure this is true, maybe they would try but the Android team seems somewhat GPL averse. I think they picked the kernel for its technical superiority and are forced to comply with the license to get it.
That's different than IBM which is willing to put resources into projects because of the GPL. It protects them from competition with proprietary forks of their own labor. They can compete, successfully, on other areas than exclusive access to critical source code
I don't know the android developers though so I may be way off base.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 7:08 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
The amount of work Google have done to get code back into the kernel mainline shows how little they like having a fork.
My own experience maintaining just a few small patches for a few small packages encourages me to believe it doesn't get any easier with thousands of patches.
Google are just people. Thinking of them as evil personified with greed on top, the kind of people who laugh in the developers' faces about all the extra work they create for them ... well, it's just silly. If nothing else, think about it from the greedy point of view that it's better to get patches back into mainline and lower dev costs and increase product stability.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 11:46 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
> Whether it's ... or ... or [someone] deciding what license is best for someone else's software
I'm commenting on the future of the software *I* use and recommend.
When I see an event that will probably have a negative impact on the future quality or quantity of the software I use and recommend (free software), I say "Oh, pity".
Some posts here seem to treat copyright holders as holy, and comments on their decisions as blasphemy.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 12:21 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Whether it's the government deciding saccharin is bad for everybody or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs deciding what software I can use on my computer or coriordan deciding what license is best for someone else's software, the common thread is to unilaterally decide for other people, based on "I am ideologically pure". I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to name the rhetorical trick being used here. Last time I checked, Windows was still being bundled on most computers sold at retail, people were still having to take vendors to court to get Windows "unbundled", and Apple were still insisting that you can only use their "App Store" to get software and that they were the ones who decided what should and shouldn't be available. Meanwhile, Ciarán O'Riordan still doesn't seem to have the power to decide which licence people get to use. And I see that the challenge to raise the standard of discussion was met with pop-culture religion and communism references. It's clearly not so much a matter of putting words into other people's mouths as stuffing a whole dictionary in there.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 15:50 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
Go ahead and read "communism" and "religion" pop culture references into my comment, or fail to see any valid comparison. That's what the FSF does too, cover its ears and pretend its opinions are still relevant. They used to matter a lot more, before they became so shrill and isolated. That's the real message. The FSF and Richard Stallman come across as a wannabe Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, wanting the whole world to do as they dictate merely because they say so. Just because they don't have that power doesn't make their message any less obnoxious.
Sometimes leaders need to look behind them to make sure someone is still following.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 16:03 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Actually, you weren't the source of most of the blatant references to religious and political clichés, but terms like "true believers" certainly help to keep the discussion civilised, I always find.
And my point that people project undue influence onto the FSF (or other organisations, along with anyone who happens to agree with them in any way) is illustrated very well by your response. I sometimes wonder, in an era when anyone and everyone has an opinion and where filtering out those opinions is a part of everyday life, what motivation anyone would have to complain about the influence of an organisation by comparing it to a selection of large corporations who have far more influence over policy, commerce and the lifestyle of individuals than the FSF with its comparatively modest campaigning.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:31 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
So we don't need to worry about the FSF going off the deep end until they're big enough that it actually matters?
Not sure I agree with that.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 22, 2012 12:57 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Well, if enough people object to the FSF's views, the growth of the organisation and its influence will be self-limiting, although the campaigns that seem to annoy some people seem fairly innocuous: spelling out the disadvantages to society and the end-user about things like DRM and various control features in, say, Windows is really only about telling people things that they may (or may not) want to hear.
Of course you will always get people who will claim "brainwashing" and that people are somehow tricked into supporting such organisations. Again, this is a laughable assertion when hundreds of millions of people probably have to listen to the Windows jingle every day using products (and being shown advertisements) made by an industry that has systematically reduced choice over the last two decades, with most of these people living in societies where brand loyalty is regarded more highly than objective consideration of any particular set of issues.
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 20, 2012 21:32 UTC (Mon) by Kluge (guest, #2881) [Link]
If the VLC developers so disliked GPL3, as you say, why switch to a GPL3 compatible license like LGPL2.1+?
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 20, 2012 22:00 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
That makes as much sense as asking why people switch to the BSD or MIT license to avoid the GPLv3.
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 20, 2012 23:09 UTC (Mon) by Kluge (guest, #2881) [Link]
I disagree. The previous comment implied that the developers of VLC dislike the changes introduced with version 3 of the GPL. If that's true, then why use *any* GPL with the "or later version" language? If it was specifically the GPLv3 that they disliked, they could have used LGPLv2.1 *only*. AFAIK, the "or later version" issue doesn't arise with BSD or MIT licenses.
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 20, 2012 23:19 UTC (Mon) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
> If it was specifically the GPLv3 that they disliked, they could have
> used LGPLv2.1 *only*.
Nota bene: Assuming that I'm reading the GPL compatibility matrix correctly, "LGPLv2.1 only" is actually compatible with GPLv3.
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 21, 2012 22:28 UTC (Tue) by Kluge (guest, #2881) [Link]
Thanks for the link. I hadn't realized that "LGPLv2.1 gives you permission to relicense the code under any version of the GPL since GPLv2."
GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say Posted Feb 21, 2012 0:19 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
???
They want their software to be _more_ widely usable than the GPL3 allows, not less. So being deliberately GPL3-incompatible would be self-defeating.
It's GPL2+ -> LGPL2.1+ Posted Feb 21, 2012 3:10 UTC (Tue) by idupree (subscriber, #71169) [Link]
Quick facts:
Their LGPL press release[1] says "This change of license[...] is a move from the current license (GPLv2 or later) to the LGPLv2.1 or later license." Thus, it was already GPLv3-compatible under GPL2+ licensing.
Also "The license of the VLC media player will continue to be GPLv2 or later."
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 19, 2012 15:35 UTC (Sun) by Sho (subscriber, #8956) [Link]
Technically, just about every KDE application can be a VLC frontend today: KDE's audio/video library Phonon has a VLC backend plugin, developed together with the VLC developers. Next to the GStreamer backend most distributions ship by default it's the most actively developed and used backend, and the backend used by default on Windows (bundled via the KDE Windows installer or the standalone installers of apps like Amarok). And of course this is achieved via libvlc.
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 21, 2012 6:46 UTC (Tue) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] I guess this means that, nowadays, every program will evolve until you can use it to watch videos. In the old days, evolution was complete when it got e-mail, but now you can e-mail videos.
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 20, 2012 13:38 UTC (Mon) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
I mostly worry this will result in lots of VLC + spyware + agressive seo/marketing frontends targeting clueless users.
Hopefully VLCs brand is strong enough now that when users of proprietary systems ask friends how to get the latest videos to work, they'll get pointed to VLC.
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 21, 2012 15:59 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Really? Because spyware authors are currently ensuring that they're GPL compliant?
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 21, 2012 16:10 UTC (Tue) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
Your point is basically valid, bad actors shouldn't be expected to follow the license. I was more thinking of less black-and-white bad guys, more along the lines of how download.com bundled their own "helpful extras," for "user experience enhancement." I'm not sure in that case whether they violated the license, but they're the sort of big player who would prefer not to, while shipping their "enhanced version."
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:36 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Ha, true. But that sort of thing strikes me as a self-correcting fringe case that might not be worth worrying about.
(easy for me to say...)
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 20, 2012 23:19 UTC (Mon) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
Was the License change made to allow vlc back into the Android market or will this be a mute point in that fiasco?
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 21, 2012 1:07 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
The Android Market's terms are compatible with the GPL, and VLC has been available there for quite a while. The "fiasco" was with Apple's iOS App Store, and Apple's terms are probably incompatible with the LGPL as well (though there's some legal questions here).
VLC's front end code is still under the GPL anyway. So this really is a moot (not mute) point.
VLC 2.0 released Posted Feb 21, 2012 3:00 UTC (Tue) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
Thanks,
My bad, wrong app store, wrong moot/mute...
VLC on Android? Posted Mar 1, 2012 8:30 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]
Is it really? I searched for VLC and found a lot of things calling themselves VLC but I have no idea of their provenance. The official VLC webpage (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-android.html) just tells me it's in development and offers no pointers to the development release.
VLC on Android? Posted Mar 5, 2012 16:57 UTC (Mon) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
You're right, and I hadn't looked closely enough. There are VLC-based apps available on Android Market (which helps address jmm82's question about license compatibility) but none of them are official; looks like the most functional ones are still somewhat buggy and are based on VLC 1.1.x.
The first unofficial public builds of the soon-to-be-official 2.0-based Android version were posted on the 3rd of March.
VLC on Android? Posted Mar 6, 2012 8:12 UTC (Tue) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]
Any pointers? The front page still points to a work in progress message.
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