search

AviSynth / AviSynthPlus

AviSynth with improvements
http://avs-plus.net
953 stars 72 forks source link

Project appears to be unlicensed #211

Open saltedcoffii opened 3 years ago

saltedcoffii commented 3 years ago

This source code doesn't have a license, as far as I can tell. There is no LICENSE file for the entire project, although some languages in distrib/docs have a license. I scoured the website as well and found nothing. According to https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/, a project without a license is "all rights reserved" and prohibits users from compiling/distributing binaries of this software. Please add a license. There is a relatively exhaustive list at https://choosealicense.com/appendix. Also, by adding a license this (depending on the license) allows third parties such as unix-like distributions to package this software and distribute binaries. Thank you for your consideration! DISCLAIMER: I'm not a laywer, this isn't legal advice.

qyot27 commented 3 years ago

It's GPLv2 (with a GPL linking exception for plugins); it appears at the top of many of the *.cpp and *.h files in the source tree - but most critically, the avisynth.h and avisynth_c.h headers, which are the central support headers for both the core and any external program wanting to implement support for AviSynth.

The lack of a LICENSE file titled such is mostly an artifact of classic AviSynth being an MSVC and Windows-only project, possibly also because there's copies of the GPL included in distrib for displaying during the install process on Windows through both the old Nullsoft Installer and through the new InnoSetup based one. On Windows, it gets installed* into [Drive]:\[Program Files]\AviSynth+\License.

*https://github.com/AviSynth/AviSynthPlus/blob/master/distrib/WinInstaller/avisynth%2B.iss#L149

Also see FFmpeg requiring the use of --enable-gpl to use --enable-avisynth, the package in Arch's Community repo, and the recipe in HaikuPorts.

saltedcoffii commented 3 years ago

Alright that makes sense. Would you mind adding a COPYING or LICENSE file to the root of the repo either with a license or saying something similar to what you just told me?