juhovh / libasf Goto Github PK

Compilation and installing
--------------------------

The library uses Waf (http://freehackers.org/~tnagy/bksys.html) build system
which requires Python to be installed. There are no other requirements and the
required Waf script is already included with the distribution. You most likely
want to compile using the following commands:

./waf configure
./waf build
sudo ./waf install

In this case the library its equivalent header and a test program named
'asftest' is installed to the /usr/local directory on the computer.


Current status of the library
-----------------------------

This library is provided under the LGPL license. It is based mainly on the
documentation provided by VLC and ffmpeg ASF parsers but it is however
rewritten and doesn't share any code with them except the necessary identifiers
and variable names that are file format specific.

Right now the status of this library is usable and working, but needs more
testing. It is written in ANSI C, compiled with '-Wall -ansi -pedantic' flags,
doesn't use any libraries and only very few libc functions. Therefore it should
be highly portable. The goal is to make the library usable with all major open
source music and video players. Already now it handles many errors better than
its predecessors.


License issues related to possible VLC derived code
---------------------------------------------------

Since libasf has used VLC as documentation and therefore could under some
circumstances be considered as a derived product, both marked copyright holders
of VLC's ASF parser code (Gildas Bazin and Laurent Aimar) have been contacted
and they have given approval for this project. To quote from the email
conversation:

On Wed, Apr 11, 2007, Gildas Bazin wrote:
Personnaly I don't mind at all and I don't think it violates any copyright if
as you say you basically rewrote everything. However fenrir wrote most of this
code in VLC so his opinion has probably more weight than mine.

On Thu, Apr 12, 2007, Laurent Aimar wrote:
Your implementation is fine with me, and if there is any doubt I accept the
re-licensing of the code I wrote for the VLC asf demuxer under LGPL (as at the
first look, the code seems to have the same workflow and structure).

Therefore there should be no copyright problems with libasf and LGPL license.