Developing software that uses opensource or GLP software

[wiseant]

Hi everyone,

I have written a dvd motion menu program that utilizes avisynth, dgindex, ffmpeg or HCenc or QuEnc

If I want to make my program available commercially - what concerns do I need to address re the open source or GPL software?

Any suggestions or links would be appreciated

TIA
wiseant

[johns0]

You have to ask all the authors of the software for their permission to use in a commercial application and then state in your product that you use the software by permission of the auhors and state what opl/gpl software is used.

So basically it will be tough to make your product commercial when lots of the open source authors dont like people using it for commercial use and state in their agreement not to charge anyone.

You can make a gui and try to sell it stating that people need to download the additional tools but that is a hard sell to people who want to make easy dvds.

[creamyhorror]

Tangentially, aren't there a whole bunch of commercial programs out there that shamelessly use free software? No one seems to be getting on their developers' asses for it.

[wiseant]

Thanks for the replies,

When I thought some more about it - this is really an "add-on" - the compiled exe file does not use avisynth, dvdauthorgui, dgindex, ffmpeg, hcenc, or quenc.

What my program does is generate the .avs files for the motion menus, the project file for dvdauthorgui, and the batch file for each encoder. Of course, the user can use any mpeg2 encoder that accepts .avs files.

Any thoughts?

TIA
wiseant

[liquid217]

The gpl does allow selling software.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

All of your components will have to be gpl though for this to apply.