-All PulseAudio source files are licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public
-License. (see file LGPL for details)
+All PulseAudio source files, except as noted below, are licensed under the GNU
+Lesser General Public License. (see file LGPL for details)
However, the server side has optional GPL dependencies. These include the
-libsamplerate and gdbm (core libraries), LIRC (lirc module), FFTW (equalizer
-module) and bluez (bluetooth proximity helper program) libraries, although
-others may also be included in the future. If PulseAudio is compiled with these
-optional components, this effectively downgrades the license of the server part
-to GPL (see the file GPL for details), exercising section 3 of the LGPL. In
-such circumstances, you should treat the client library (libpulse) of PulseAudio
-as being LGPL licensed and the server part (libpulsecore) as being GPL licensed.
-Since the PulseAudio daemon, tests, various utilities/helpers and the modules
-link to libpulsecore and/or the afore mentioned optional GPL dependencies they
-are of course also GPL licensed also in this scenario.
+libsamplerate and gdbm (core libraries), LIRC (lirc module) and FFTW (equalizer
+module), although others may also be included in the future. If PulseAudio is
+compiled with these optional components, this effectively downgrades the
+license of the server part to GPL (see the file GPL for details), exercising
+section 3 of the LGPL. In such circumstances, you should treat the client
+library (libpulse) of PulseAudio as being LGPL licensed and the server part
+(libpulsecore) as being GPL licensed. Since the PulseAudio daemon, tests,
+various utilities/helpers and the modules link to libpulsecore and/or the afore
+mentioned optional GPL dependencies they are of course also GPL licensed also
+in this scenario.
+
+In addition to this, if D-Bus support is enabled, the PulseAudio client library
+(libpulse) MAY need to be licensed under the GPL, depending on the license
+adopted for libdbus. libdbus is licensed under either of the Academic Free
+License 2.1 or GPL 2.0 or above. Which of these applies is your choice, and the
+result affects the licensing of libpulse and thus, potentially, all programs
+that link to libpulse.
Andre Adrian's echo cancellation implementation is licensed under a less
restrictive license - see src/modules/echo-cancel/adrian-license.txt for
Some other files pulled into PA source (i.e. reference implementations that are
considered too small and stable to be considered as an external library) use the
-more permissive MIT license. This include the device reservation DBus protocol
+more permissive MIT license. These include the device reservation DBus protocol
and realtime kit implementations.
+A more permissive BSD-style license is used for LFE filters, see
+src/pulsecore/filter/LICENSE.WEBKIT for details.
+
Additionally, a more permissive Sun license is used for code that performs
u-law, A-law and linear PCM conversions.
projects / platform / upstream / pulseaudio.git / blobdiff