To clarify: at the moment FLIF is licensed under the GPL v3+. Once the format is finalized, the next logical step would be to make a library version of it, which will be most probably get licensed under the LGPL v3+, or maybe something even more permissive. There is not much point in doing that when the format is not yet stable.
It's not because FLIF is GPL v3+ now, that we can't add more permissive licenses later.
And of course I'm planning to describe the algorithms and the exact file format in a detailed and public specification, which should be accurate enough to allow anyone to write their own FLIF implementation.
> Unlike some other image formats (e.g. BPG and JPEG 2000), FLIF is completely royalty-free and it is not known to be encumbered by software patents.
The reference implementations are also open source (dual licensed between LGPL and Apache 2)... But even if you don't like those, you can write your own under whatever license you like. They're just implementations of a spec.
Well, IANAL but I think the original creator of FLIF could still decide give a special license to Adobe if they want to negotiate one, no?
EDIT: practically confirmed elsewhere in the thread by the original author, with motivation:
> There is still a lot of room for improvement in the encoder, which is why (at least for now) it has the LGPL license, to ensure that improvements can be integrated in the reference implementation
I'm open to negotiation if Adobe would want to include the FLIF encoder in Photoshop. The other contributors have signed a CLA that allows me to change the licensing to anything more permissive than GPLv3. So if Adobe wants it, they can pay for a non-copyleft license (e.g. Apache 2.0). If that ever happens, I'll be happy to share the licensing fees with the other contributors and donate some of it to the FSF.
Any progress on the license situation? I'd love to work more on it, but worried about it being a bit of a dead end due to uncertainty about the future of the license and not being able to use it in any commercial projects.
Sorry about the license, I am trying to reach a beta version within a month along with a system-description paper that outlines the long term vision behind building such a system. At that point I plan on relaxing the license. There are certain constraints such as making sure that all underlying models are correctly licensed. Also FAISS which I use is licensed by Facebook under an explicit non-commercial license.
Hi, I'm the guy that wrote the decompiled version. I forgot to ask David Tristram whether he wanted a specific license applied to the ep part of what I released beyond the text for which he asked. The version of ep in the IGL distribution is under the GPL, but I've sent an email to him for clarification. I'll update the license file once I get a reply.
This looks neat! The license is unclear from a quick glance of the Github so I won't be reading any of the source available, but I will be sure to try it out as a user.
Hi, the license is a temporary choice. I wish to release it under a permissive license in the future, I'd just like to secure a tiny bit of funding before that !
And of course I'm planning to describe the algorithms and the exact file format in a detailed and public specification, which should be accurate enough to allow anyone to write their own FLIF implementation.
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