[FFmpeg-devel] full swscale relicensing to LGPL

[Attila Kinali]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:21:32 +0100
Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:

> Long time ago i belived there are people who do this by mistake and are
> poor near innocent students who just didnt know better, iam starting to
> doubt this.
> a company that cant check a license against what they are doing
> when they are told they violate it are in the wrong business IMHO.
> You cant commercially distribute software under a license you didnt
> read or understand.

Actually, i think it's so common to violate licenses, that very
few people think about it. The last company i worked for violated
the GPL of a whole linux base system, they didnt even tell the
customers that they were using linux inside their boxes.
When i told them about it, they just replied that they read
the GPL and came to the conclusion that what they are doing is
right... no matter what i said, they wouldn't believe me that
it still was wrong... Well, after the things that happend last
summer, i'm quite sure that they knowingly ignored the licence
issue.

I know, i'm generalizing, but given that the people at that company
were nothing special and typical programmers/managers, i'd say
license violation, especially of OSS programms is so common, that
the whole economy would grind to a halt if all violations would
be prosecuted.

			Attila Kinali

PS: yes, there are companies, who check licenses first, i'm
currently working at one of those ;-)
-- 
If you want to walk fast, walk alone.
If you want to walk far, walk together.
		-- African proverb