Mutagen: GPL, is there commercially licensing possibility, or LGPL-a-like possibility?

[Ciantic]

Hi!

I was wondering, since mutagen is GPL, and that is no-no for most of
the projects. Is there commercial licenses for sale?

I would like to use mutagen, but for the project I'm working on the
GPL is not a option... LGPL would be more than suitable. This similar
problem is probably for many people using mutagen, unknowingly at
least.

Also I was wondering since there is listed projects using mutagen that
are licensed with MIT license: if one creates MIT license wrapper for
mutagen, is it then allowed to use this wrapper for commercial
projects? As long as the wrapper source code is freely available...

Thanks.

[Michael Urman]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 08:48, Ciantic <cia...@mbnet.fi> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I was wondering, since mutagen is GPL, and that is no-no for most of
> the projects. Is there commercial licenses for sale?

Hi Ciantic,

I disagree that GPL is a no-no for most projects. However I've
certainly seen a lack of its use in the commercial space. I assume
that's what you meant.

We haven't yet sold any alternate licenses for mutagen, and expect we
wouldn't find full copyright-holder approval for doing so. Or if we
did, I suspect the price point would be too high. On the other hand,
GPLv2 vs GPLv2-and-later has come up, and even that has been an
intentionally high hurdle.

That said, if you are looking for subsets of mutagen's capabilities to
be written for hire in a new language, it might be worth asking about
that specifically. Look to the top of a format's implementation file
for the person(s) who did the most work on a given format.

> I would like to use mutagen, but for the project I'm working on the
> GPL is not a option... LGPL would be more than suitable. This similar
> problem is probably for many people using mutagen, unknowingly at
> least.
>
> Also I was wondering since there is listed projects using mutagen that
> are licensed with MIT license: if one creates MIT license wrapper for
> mutagen, is it then allowed to use this wrapper for commercial
> projects? As long as the wrapper source code is freely available...

My non-lawyerly understanding is that they can write and distribute
their code under just about any license they want. However when it's
using mutagen (a GPLv2 codebase), it must comply with the terms of the
GPLv2. The MIT license is convertible in place, so at run-time it can
be considered GPLv2. The user of this wrapper must similarly be
licensed under compatible terms.

The distinction between GPLv2 and MIT for this wrapper is that the MIT
license is more permissive: parts of the wrapper's code can be used
anywhere the MIT license allows. However when used as a stack with
both the GPLv2 and MIT licensed code, the overall product is
effectively GPLv2.

If there is distribution of mutagen or derived works under terms
incompatible with mutagen's licensing, then the distributors are doing
something we believe to be illegal. Hopefully they will extricate
themselves soon; I urge you not repeat their mistakes, and appreciate
that you approached us to ask these questions.

--
Michael Urman

[Ciantic]

Thanks for you answer,

I though must mention that I have found a more suitable tagging
library for my project: http://id3lib.sourceforge.net/ and
http://pyid3lib.sourceforge.net/ (the python bindings seems to be old,
but I think it's fixable). Surely no match for mutagen which can
handle several formats, but will do for now.

Both of those are licensed under LGPL.

[Ville-Pekka Vainio]

su, 2009-12-20 kello 10:14 -0600, Michael Urman kirjoitti:
> On the other hand,
> GPLv2 vs GPLv2-and-later has come up, and even that has been an
> intentionally high hurdle.

I've been meaning to ask about GPLv2 or later, sorry if I'm partly
hijacking the thread now. Time permitting, I'm interested in adding some
tagging functionality to the gPodder podcasting client, which is GPLv3
or later licensed. If I understand correctly, a GPLv2 only library can't
be used together with GPLv3. Are there any plans of making mutagen GPLv2
or later at some point? For now, I've thought about using TagPy, which
is apparently BSD licensed.

--
Ville-Pekka Vainio

[Michael Urman]

I don't think it's too likely, but it's been a while since I last
brushed up on the v3 license.

See http://code.google.com/p/mutagen/issues/detail?id=38 or
http://www.mail-archive.com/gpodde...@lists.berlios.de/msg00233.html
etc. Both of these show up in a search for "mutagen GPLv3".

--
Michael Urman

[Joe Wreschnig]

I'm getting a little frustrated that I never see this question going
the other way. Every is asking Mutagen if we can relicense to GPL v2
or later; I don't think I've seen anyone asking the gpodder guys (or
whatever the GPLv3 flavor-of-the-month is) why they can't relicense to
GPL v2 or later. I see zero benefit in being GPLv3 only.

[Ville-Pekka Vainio]

ma, 2009-12-21 kello 09:42 -0800, Joe Wreschnig kirjoitti:
> I'm getting a little frustrated that I never see this question going
> the other way.

I can understand your frustration. The reason I asked is that I know
gPodder would be very difficult to relicense because there are so many
copyright holders. I was not aware of the copyright situation of
mutagen, though, the library just looked like it could have been useful.

--
Ville-Pekka Vainio