The VideoLAN Forums

Hello!

English is not my first language and i have a problem understanding all the different licence types and under which circumstances they apply.

I'm developing a commercial (= closed source) application under Windows and i would like to use libvlc to display embedded video. Is there any legal way to dynamically link to libvlc.dll and ship it together with the plugins with my application?

If yes, under which conditions?

If not: Can i download the vlcplayer installer from my software, start it silently and then use libvlc.dll to display video?

If not: Is there *any* way do to that legally? Can i buy a commercial licence? How much would that cost? (My application is a one-man project and i couldn't afford to pay hundreds or even thousands of EUROs).

Thanks for any insight.

Yes.
Under the LGPL license, meaning you should give access to the sources, and give away your modifications of libVLC.

Thanks for your answer.

As i didn't make any modifications to libVLC i would just provide a link to the vlclib source package that corresponds to the version i'm using?

What about the plugins? Are they considered part of libVLC? Without the plugins the library would be pretty much useless.

Yes. Yes.

Hi everyone, I very happy that I can speak with all of you and thank you very much for huge work that you do. Now I develop plugin for some engine that will use VLC dlls and I have some problem with licensing (I really not very strong in this issue), because I think I will distribute this in commercial direction. How I know VLC engine relicensed to LGPL, so it can be possible, but I really don't sure.
So now I using the libvlc, libvlccore - I think these two libs has LGPL license, right?
Also I using some "plugins" dll but I can't find any information about their licensing, in details is:
access
- liblive555 - I think is GPL, but I am not sure;
- libhttp - don't known;
- libfilesystem - don't known;
audio_filter
- libaudio_format - don't known;
- libtrivial_channel_mixer - don't known;
audio_output
- libdirectsound - don't known;
codec
- libavcodec_plugin - it's FFmpeg or libav, so is LGPL;
- liba52 - not sure, but it's maybe GPLv2+;
- libmpeg_audio - don't known;
demux
- libts - don't known;
- libps - don't known;
all mux - also don't known;
all packetizer - also don't known;
all stream_filter - also don't known;
video_chroma
- libswscale - it's FFmpeg or libav, so is LGPL;
video_output
- libvmem_plugin - also don't known;
I know that all of you have a huge work, but maybe someone can answer to my question

Everything is LGPL but liba52

Ok, thank you, it's very nice. So to those libs do I have to provide the links to their sources that corresponds to the version I'm using? If yes, where in my project I have to post the link/links (in special txt file or in project description) and do I need to specify that I'm using VLC?

What you have to provide for LGPL libraries and plugins is laid out in the terms of the license. Better read it than rely on someone's else possibly incorrect paraphrasing.