[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] G722 decoder

David Conrad lessen42
Tue Mar 24 22:37:11 CET 2009


On Mar 24, 2009, at 5:22 PM, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:

> On 3/24/2009 2:14 PM, Kenan Gillet wrote:
>>
>> you can relicense LGPL v2.1 to Any GPL v2 or later:
>>
>> 3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public
>> License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library. To do
>> this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this License, so
>> that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License, version
>> 2, instead of to this License. (If a newer version than version 2 of
>> the ordinary GNU General Public License has appeared, then you can
>> specify that version instead if you wish.) Do not make any other
>> change in these notices.
>
> Well, I don't read that you are _forced_ to relicense as an "or later"
> GPL v2. It seems that you can perfectly relicense as GPL v2 _only_,  
> but
> you can state also "or later" (if you wish).

It's a bit more subtle: exercising this clause involves replacing the  
text of the LGPL license with a specific version of the GPL. The "or  
later" is not part of this, and the relicensed copy cannot later use a  
newer version of the GPL, as explained in footnote 2 of the  
compatibility matrix in the GPL FAQ [1].

As that matrix shows, one of the problems with LPGL v2.1 only is that  
if in the future you want to use ffmpeg together with LGPLv3 code,  
your only option would be to relicense ffmpeg and the other code under  
GPLv3.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#compat-matrix-footnote-2



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