GPL License

[Garry Newman]

Hey guys, I'm making a video encoding library and I'm looking for a fast RGB to YUV implementation.

My library isn't aimed at being the best or the most feature packed. It's aiming at being the easiest to use in your program. I also want people to be able to use my library in their propriety software (by linking dynamically).

Is there any chance you could change your license to the LGPL? As if I include pixfc in my library, then people include my library in their programs - then they'll have to release their programs under the GPL too. Which is a restriction I don't really want to have.

Hope that isn't a cheeky thing to ask..

Thanks

garry

[Pix FC]

Hi Garry,
Thanks for using PixFC.
The decision to publish our work under the GPL license was not taken lightly.
As far we know, there are no other GPL libraries providing similar capabilities and features to PixFC:
- automatic adjustment of the SSE conversion function to use based on detected CPU features,
- variety of conversion functions, each with advantages and trade-off (fast nearest-neighbour resampling / slower multi-tap average resampling, SSSE3 / SSE2 / scalar)
- balance between conversion speed and image quality accessible and settable through the API.
We believe there is a real value for the open-source community in offering PixFC under the GPL license, and wish for it to remain that way.
Frank

[Garry Newman]

Thanks for the reply. I won't be using it in my project (http://code.google.com/p/holly/) due to the license. But I appreciate that this is your decision and you won't be swayed.

Thanks

garry

[Seth Willits]

Popping in late here, but I'm in the same boat. GPL does likely preclude me from using PixFC in any way, beyond a reference and benchmark implementation to look at. I'm always quite surprised when libraries are released under GPL because it often prevents any commercial entity from putting resources into the project. Bummer.