Pali Rohár has changed the license for the libopenaptx project, which offers an implementation of the aptX codec (Audio Processing Technology) used in the Bluetooth A2DP profile. The package includes the libopenaptx.so library and utilities for encoding and decoding audio. The license has been changed from LGPLv2.1 to GPLv3+, which will make it impossible to use the libopenaptx code in projects that are distributed only under the GPLv2 license without re-licensing the code linked to the library to GPLv3. This will achieve license compatibility with projects under the Apache 2.0 license.
The license change was a response to a conflict with the developers of the Freedesktop project and the company Collabora, who, according to the creator of Libopenaptx, violated the licensing agreement and abused the accepted code of conduct. In particular, according to Pali, the developers of Freedesktop and Collabora moved his code into PulseAudio without indicating authorship.
As evidence, the author of libopenaptx referred to a function he wrote, decode_buffer, where even the comments match, but according to Pali, the Freedesktop developers claimed that this was their own code. In response to the outrage and attempts to discuss how this action violates the licensing agreement, the Freedesktop developers simply deleted the issue message, claiming that such a discussion violated the project's code of conduct.
Realizing the impossibility of resolving the issue peacefully, the author of libopenaptx changed the license to GPLv3 and added a note prohibiting the use of the code in Freedesktop projects. The license change took effect starting with version 0.2.1 of libopenaptx, which has already been blacklisted by the Freedesktop developers, prohibiting its use in PipeWire code due to licensing incompatibility.
Daniel Stone, a former board member of the X.Org Foundation and one of the key developers of Wayland and PipeWire, who serves as the Graphics Projects Lead at Collabora, stated that the change of license for libopenaptx is legally questionable. Libopenaptx is not a personal development by Pali Rohar, but rather a fork of the code from the FFmpeg project, which was originally provided under the LGPLv2.1 license. Pali Rohar cannot unilaterally change the license for parts of the code that do not belong to him, much less impose additional restrictions on the scope of use.
For re-licensing, explicit consent from the original authors of the code on which the fork was based is required. According to the terms of the LGPL, updating the license without obtaining consent from other authors is only possible to a newer version of LGPL, i.e., up to LGPL v3.0, but not to GPLv3, which includes additional restrictions. Pali Rohar responded that he did not impose any additional restrictions, and the project is now delivered under a clean GPLv3 license, with mentions of Freedesktop and Collabora being merely clarifications in the README file that projects violating GPLv3 cannot use the code.
Regarding the claim that Freedesktop violated the license for Libopenaptx, Daniel Stone believes it to be unfounded, as the code was transferred by the developer to the PulseAudio project with acceptance of the licensing agreement, and further attempts by the developer of Libopenaptx to retract the transferred rights to the code are ineffective. It is also unfounded to establish a link between adherence to a code of conduct and a licensing violation, as well as the assertion of a licensing violation by Collabora, which is not connected to the actions that led to the participant's ban.
Daniel Stone stated that he deleted that discussion and blocked the developer of Libopenaptx, but he did so on his own initiative during his free time, not as an employee of Collabora. The removal was carried out after systematic breaches of the code of conduct, which all discussion participants agree to. Equating the removal for behavior with a license violation is absurd, as open licenses do not regulate the right to develop only on unmoderated platforms and do not require providing unlimited access to all development platforms.
Source: opennet.ru
