[mythtv] Licensing issues

[Johnathon Meichtry]

I say good luck and I hope you can turn it into a real money making venture. 
The more commercial organisations selling and shrinkwrapping MythTV the 
better.  In terms of evolution and development it is only early days but if 
major companies like Hauppauge etc. can ship media/video players and not 
provide updates thereafter then I can't see why you couldn't do the same 
with MythTV - as long as it works as advertised and the consumer is getting 
value for money what does it matter.

In terms of LGPL and GPL licensing there is no reason why you cannot make 
money from distributing a product containg LGPL and GPL.  My case in point 
are the million of media players and STB's being shipped by retailers and 
manufactuers.  For example Yahoo Broadband TV in  Japan, their STB runs Open 
Source embedded linux with all the various trappings and utilities/apps with 
their HTML UI.  The irony is that if you call them up and ask them for a 
copy of the source (which is a requirement under GPL) they will tell you to 
take a walk and say it's developed in-house and confidential.


Good luck,

Johnathon



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Asher Schaffer" <freedenizen at gmail.com>
To: "Development of mythtv" <mythtv-dev at mythtv.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 11:20 PM
Subject: Re: [mythtv] Licensing issues


> On 11/17/05, Paul Huff <pc.huff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello All!
>>
>>  Glad to join!  I was wondering what the licensing issues were with using
>> MythTV.  You see, I am considering building and installing Home Theater 
>> PCs
>> as a side business and wanted to use my own customization of this 
>> software.
>> I won't be "selling your software" but selling a system that "uses" your
>> software which is provided free.  Is this a potential problem?  I want to 
>> do
>> this the right way.  If all goes well I should have extra cash to donate, 
>> of
>> course! (if you guys take donations) and I would love to contribute any 
>> code
>> I write.  Please let me know how everyone feels.
>
> Aside from the Zap2It issue, I think most of the code is released
> under LGPL and GPL. but it should say in the source anyway.
>


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