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Comment by kolx

9 hours ago

Thank you for pointing this out, to be completely honest, I did not consider licensing because the website started as a collection of tools I built to run locally and get into video/audio codecs then I realised it is already a decent collection of tools that other people might want to use too. But I will be making the needed changes to comply fully tonight. At least I comply with this: `Do not misspell FFmpeg (two capitals F and lowercase "mpeg")` I realised I have some more reading to do regarding GPL vs LGPL because of the wasm project.

22 comments

kolx

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jmaw  9 hours ago

You should look into how other companies and tools that use FFMPEG handle this situation.

I wonder if you can keep your application itself closed source, but make an open-source adapter that handles the interaction with FFMPEG.

I'm not super familiar with open source licensing, and IANAL, so make sure to do your own research :)

As an example, I believe Audacity required me to install ffmpeg manually myself, and add it to my path. This is slightly different since Audacity itself is also open source. But could be helpful to reference.

  • noduerme  8 hours ago

    Yes, Audacity definitely requires that. It can't open or save mp3s unless you separately install ffmpeg.

  • kolx  8 hours ago

    Thank you, I guess I won't be fixing any bugs tonight but at least I will figure out how to comply. I appreciate the help for real!

freedomben  9 hours ago

Any reason not to just open source it? Personally I'd love to hack on it :-) IANAL, but IMHO AGPL would be a good fit here as it complies with LGPL and also ensures nobody besides you (the copyright holder) can stand it up for profit without contributing back).

  • netdevphoenix  9 hours ago

    > Any reason not to just open source it?

    Mmmm...potential commercialisation? Always find it curious that people expect to get source code for free in ways that they don't do for other work (ask George Martin to release his drafts and notes).

    • mbesto  9 hours ago

      The parent commenter is making that comment because this is precisely the nature of why the GPL license exists. Most of the processing of this application is FFMPEG, so why should someone who has done zero development on that library commercialize it?

      5 replies →

    • sroussey  8 hours ago

      Or the other likely version: prevent commercialization. No source means that someone can’t make a fork, put on a new domain, run ads and charge money for his work.

    • mghackerlady  9 hours ago

      The problem is you can commercialise free software if you're creative about it. RMS made a decent amount of money working on emacs, redhat and SUSE exist, google has managed to commercialise chromium

      2 replies →

    • freedomben  9 hours ago

      > Mmmm...potential commercialisation?

      Hence why I asked the question... And not everybody does everything for commercial reasons, so it would be dumb to assume that and therefore not ask the question.

      > Always find it curious that people expect to get source code for free in ways that they don't do for other work (ask George Martin to release his drafts and notes).

      Where in my question did you get that I expect to get source code for free in ways that I don't for other work?

      But regardless, you do know that open source is a common thing right? People open source things all the time, especially on HN.

      Also OP already says they don't do any uploading of your videos to the cloud, so this thing already runs local-only. It's not like there is a shortage of video editors around (including ... open source ... video editors)

  • kolx  9 hours ago

    I never maintained an open source project and not sure how to even do it properly. I am also not sure how much effort would I have to put to an open source project. I imagine I would need to collaborate with a pretty much anyone who has an interest in the area. Again not that I mind just not sure how much time I have to spare. Right now this is a really slow process and tbh I have to rely on manual testing at least for the editor.

    • Mashimo  9 hours ago

      Nah, besides sharing the code you don't have to do anything.

      Most people would want you to upload the code to github, then they can star and clone it with ease. But you don't have to have an issue tracker, and you certainly don't have to read any of the issues or pull request. You can ignore or disable that.

      I think even just having a up to date .zip with all the code would be technically enough.

    • qingcharles  7 hours ago

      You don't have to collaborate with anyone. Just stick the code up on GitHub and if people file issues or PRs, then you can engage or not as you please. There are plenty of projects that are open source but don't accept any public modifications.

      You might just find you end up with some folks who genuinely want to help out, though.