Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: New, much more restrictive license in 0.7 (Read 7693 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

The Foobar 2000 v0.667 license is very straightforward:

Quote
Copyright © 2001-2003, Peter Pawlowski
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the author nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

(unimportant leaglese omitted, empathsis added)


Basically a BSD style license - you can do what you want with this software, but credit the author.

So I download 0.7b2, and before I can install it, I must agree to the following:

Quote
1.  LICENSE GRANT.  Peter Pawlowski ("Author") grants Licensee a non-exclusive and non-transferable license to reproduce and use for personal or internal business purposes the executable code version of the Product, provided any copy must contain all of the original proprietary notices. This license does not entitle Licensee to receive from Author hard-copy documentation, technical support, telephone assistance, or enhancements or updates to the Product. Licensee may not redistribute the Product.  In the event Licensee wishes to redistribute or sublicense the Product, either for profit or otherwise, Licensee must first obtain written permission from Author to do so.

2.  RESTRICTIONS. Except as otherwise expressly permitted in this Agreement, Licensee may not: (i) modify or create any derivative works of the Product or documentation, including translation or localization; (ii) decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Product (except to the extent applicable laws specifically prohibit such restriction); (iii) redistribute, encumber, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, or otherwise transfer rights to the Product; (iv) remove or alter any trademark, logo, copyright or other proprietary notices, legends, symbols or labels in the Product; or (v) publish any results of benchmark tests run on the Product to a third party without Author's prior written consent.  Plug-ins and product components provided with or as part of the Product may be used only with the Product and not on a standalone basis or with any other product.
Note: Certain parts of the product are provided in source code form with the SDK, under different license; restrictions above don't apply to them.

(several paragraphs of unimportant legalese omitted, empathsis added)



What gives, Peter?  The new license is extremely restrictive (no publishing benchmarks without the Author's written permission?  WTF?!?).  It is certainly within your rights to relicense Foobar2000, but the new license is a 180 degree shift from the openness of all previous versions.  Personally, I find it unacceptable (both on a personal and business level), and I would like to hear your reasoning behind the change.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #1 –
Meh.  SDK is still BSD-licensed.  That's all I really care about.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #2 –
Quote
Meh.  SDK is still BSD-licensed.  That's all I really care about.

I noticed that as well, and I assume it is an oversight that will be corrected eventually.  Without the Foobar 0.7 executable and a license to use it, the SDK is fairly useless (except if you want to use PFC in another project, I guess). 

I realize that almost all users and the majority of developers probably don't care one bit about licenses - or don't know any better.  Since your 0.7 component is worthless without Foobar to execute it, you and your users are effectively bound by the restrictive license, like it or not.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #3 –
This is ripped from Winamp license, some parts are indeed overkill and need to be edited out.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #4 –
Quote
I noticed that as well, and I assume it is an oversight that will be corrected eventually.  Without the Foobar 0.7 executable and a license to use it, the SDK is fairly useless (except if you want to use PFC in another project, I guess). 

I realize that almost all users and the majority of developers probably don't care one bit about licenses - or don't know any better.  Since your 0.7 component is worthless without Foobar to execute it, you and your users are effectively bound by the restrictive license, like it or not.

I don't understand what your problem is, freeware status of foobar2000 isn't ever going to change, and all "restrictions" above are present in Winamp license too, somehow noone ever complained about them. New license is just needed to prevent people from redistributing modified versions of closed parts (eg. main exe with replaced UI), and you have nothing to worry about unless your component needs modified versions of executables to run (in that case, you are in violation of forum rules point #11).
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #5 –
Quote
I don't understand what your problem is, freeware status of foobar2000 isn't ever going to change, and all "restrictions" above are present in Winamp license too, somehow noone ever complained about them.

I'm not developing Winamp plugins, now am I?  (any longer)

The biggest problem I have with the new license is that it restricts commercial (or otherwise) redistribution.  Say I want to put together a Home Theater PC system, and either sell or give it away.  I could use Winamp, but then I would have to deal with AOL TW's legal department for redistribution rights.  I can do this without restriction with Foobar2000 v0.667 and earlier, but 0.7 expressly prohibits this.  Like I said, completely within your rights, but it makes Foobar much less attractive to develop for, if there is even a possibility of the future need to redistribute it (unmodified, save for additional components).  WMP is even preferable at this point...

Quote
New license is just needed to prevent people from redistributing modified versions of closed parts (eg. main exe with replaced UI), and you have nothing to worry about unless your component needs modified versions of executables to run (in that case, you are in violation of forum rules point #11).

I have absolutely no problem with this, and can't ever see a situation where I would redistribute a modified executable.  But that is not what your license says - if that is your only intention, go back to the BSD style license, with the added restriction that modifying elements of Foobar which are closed source is not allowed (without written permission, if you wish).

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #6 –
Quote
The biggest problem I have with the new license is that it restricts commercial (or otherwise) redistribution.  Say I want to put together a Home Theater PC system, and either sell or give it away.  I could use Winamp, but then I would have to deal with AOL TW's legal department for redistribution rights.  I can do this without restriction with Foobar2000 v0.667 and earlier, but 0.7 expressly prohibits this.  Like I said, completely within your rights, but it makes Foobar much less attractive to develop for, if there is even a possibility of the future need to redistribute it (unmodified, save for additional components).  WMP is even preferable at this point...

The thing is, a modified foobar is essentially a completely different application. If you do want to redistribute it, you can just ask Peter, it's hardly a real problem. And if you're making money out of it I'm sure he wouldn't mind a donation either .

It's *not* about distributing a modified executable, it's about distributing the original executable with a different UI in, or something like that.

(FWIW, there's a quick and easy redistribution request thing for Winamp here: http://www.winamp.com/community/promote/distribution/)

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #7 –
I don't mind if people distribute original unmodified setup; maybe I'll edit the license again (don't tell me that all sites offering Winamp for download have agreements with AOL).

[edit] certain "situation" has changed since original 0.7 plan, old license may be back, so sit back and wait
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #8 –
As I understand the new license, it's forbidden to create a custom distributions with different UI/localized/preinstalled plugins (all this without modify the original exe and plugins, of course)? If so, that's sad...

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #9 –
Actually, I think that restriction is quite reasonable.  Allowing modified distributions means that Peter will have to listen to more complaints from people who recieved half-assed distributions.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #10 –
If we'll take into consideration the (usual) Peter's responces to the users complains, I don't think it's a big issue for him actually.         

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #11 –
Personally, I find this also disturbing..

From what i've seen in the media player arena, CoolPlayer is the only player that went GPL and still updates and commits to its userbase features that they want.

I do see how the GPL can *destroy* his player. Unless some coder says "hey, im gonna take all the work peter did, and make my own player and just put his name in the credits of some about page somewhere, using font 3 <snicker snicker>"

I do see that as a problem. But what REALLY attracted me to this player is its BSD licence which took some time for me to realise it worked fine for this software, i mean peter has the right to make money from his hobby. Why cant people who have been in touch with the corporate market understand what real free software means to us users. We dont want spyware, and i can only pray we dont get it from this player.

Stick to the original licence, dont be another Microsoft tightening its grip on our throats with every release of windows, with every service pack they shoot down it to choke us. This is crap man, keep this play FOR the people, let us post our POS uneducated tests of your player against others. Your player will keep growing, heck if winamp5 blows over as a peice of trash i'm sure this will dominate at the rate it's maturing.

For the sake of our conscience, please dont forget that we are your motivation for this creation. Without us users, this project would or probably been abandoned. But now we rely on it, we love it and you (peter) made us care about it.

Anyways, too many emotions are surging through me right now, better take a breather.....



Sheesh, what REALLY makes you think that after you get a userbase of this size, that a faction or fork in your project could compromise it. This is a mature player, it has it's own name. Everyone will dismiss anything else as a spoof.. You know what.. whatever man.. bring in that corporate attitude.

I know i'm making a big deal out of this, but this IS a big deal to some of us.  Can we get some justification of why this is good for everyone? How it will benifit us users because that's what the software's built for.. to please.


/rant

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #12 –
I unlurk again to just state something rather clearly. If Peter wishes to change his license, that is his call. If he wishes to charge money, that is his call. If he wishes to ask users to submit photos of them shaving animals in order to receive registration, questionable as that'd be- that is also his call.

To rail against the man over this, especially suggesting that the sole motivation of his project is making you, the end user happy (which someone has already stated)... To otherwise continue to rally up when he's already stated he's likely going to edit the license.. None of this is going to 'fix' things. It's a good way to kill a project, instead. I think that's rather selfish and will irritate the rest of us who aren't so hung up on software dogma on a _free_ program.

Few deep breaths and chill.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #13 –
Free, free, free, gimmee, gimmee, gimmee...

Gotta, gotta, have...

Don't wanna pay...

No, no, no...


Can anybody put that to music?
flac > schiit modi > schiit magni > hd650

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #14 –
The whole point of this topic was:

a: To point out that Foobar 0.7b had a new license, since most people wouldn't notice.

b: Ask Peter why the license was changed.

c: Request that it be reverted to the original BSD style license.


Getting hysterical or demanding changes is counterproductive and unnecessary.

Peter has stated that the new license will change, and his last response was
Quote
certain "situation" has changed since original 0.7 plan, old license may be back, so sit back and wait

which is fine by me.  Until the license changes or 0.7 ships, I don't think there is too much more to be said on either side of the issue.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #15 –
Quote
To rail against the man over this, especially suggesting that the sole motivation of his project is making you, the end user happy (which someone has already stated)... To otherwise continue to rally up when he's already stated he's likely going to edit the license.. None of this is going to 'fix' things. It's a good way to kill a project, instead. I think that's rather selfish and will irritate the rest of us who aren't so hung up on software dogma on a _free_ program.

Few deep breaths and chill.

I've written some programs before (freeware and shareware), and I always wanted to make the end user happy -- I endlessly invited suggestions for improvements, and implemented them ASAP (if they fit into the goals of the program) -- it made *me* happy to do it.  If I only wanted to make myself happy, I never release the program... who am I kidding?  When a program is released, the goal is to make the end user happy.  Isn't it?

If not, then what is the goal... to show what an unimaginably fabulous programmer I am? 

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #16 –
Almost invariably, the things I write are for myself, and myself alone.  Most of the things I release are released simply because I think others might enjoy/use them as well.  But I still program for myself.

I'd imagine that Peter created foobar because he wanted a good media player, and that making users happy was/is secondary at best.

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #17 –
Quote
Almost invariably, the things I write are for myself, and myself alone.  Most of the things I release are released simply because I think others might enjoy/use them as well.  But I still program for myself.

I'd imagine that Peter created foobar because he wanted a good media player, and that making users happy was/is secondary at best.

Fair enough... just expressing my personal views, not suggesting they apply to anyone else.

I'm probably more than a bit old-school in my attitudes.  To me programming is more of an art than a science, and I couldn't imagine writing a poem or doing a painting, then hanging it on the wall of my bedroom for my own "enjoyment" without anyone else using it (except in cases like very short programs designed to fulfill limited functions).  Sure, programs fulfill specific functions, but I never found it much fun to use my own programs! 

New, much more restrictive license in 0.7

Reply #18 –
Of course.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. 

One other note, though:  I also draw, and I do so only for myself.  I've only shown my drawings to a couple of people, and then only because they asked to see them.  For me, the enjoyment is in the making, moreso than the sharing.