GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
0. Scope
This License applies to any program or other work
which contains a notice placed by the copyright
holder saying it may be distributed under the terms
of this General Public License. The "Program",
below, refers to any such program or work, and a
"work based on the Program" means either the Program
or any derivative work under copyright law: that is
to say, a work containing the Program or a portion
of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or
translated into another language. (Hereinafter,
translation is included without limitation in the
term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as
"you". Activities other than copying, distribution
and modification are not covered by this License;
they are outside its scope. The act of running the
Program is not restricted, and the output from the
Program is covered only if its contents constitute a
work based on the Program (independent of having
been made by running the Program). Whether that is
true depends on what the Program does.
1. Verbatim Copies
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the
Program's source code as you receive it, in any
medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep
intact all the notices that refer to this License
and to the absence of any warranty; and give any
other recipients of the Program a copy of this
License along with the Program. You may charge a fee
for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you
may at your option offer warranty protection in
exchange for a fee.
2. Modifications and Derivative Works
You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or
any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the
Program, and copy and distribute such modifications
or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided
that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry
prominent notices stating that you changed the files
and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or
publish, that in whole or in part contains or is
derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be
licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands
interactively when run, you must cause it, when
started running for such interactive use in the most
ordinary way, to print or display an announcement
including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying
that you provide a warranty) and that users may
redistribute the program under these conditions, and
telling the user how to view a copy of this License.
These requirements apply to the modified work as a
whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not
derived from the Program, and can be reasonably
considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not
apply to those sections when you distribute them as
separate works. But when you distribute the same
sections as part of a whole which is a work based on
the Program, the distribution of the whole must be
on the terms of this License, whose permissions for
other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus
to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim
rights or contest your rights to work written
entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise
the right to control the distribution of derivative
or collective works based on the Program. In
addition, mere aggregation of another work not based
on the Program with the Program (or with a work
based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium does not bring the other work
under the scope of this License.
3. Binary Distribution and Source Code Access
You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work
based on it, under Section 2) in object code or
executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2
above provided that you also do one of the
following: a) Accompany it with the complete
corresponding machine-readable source code; or b)
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at
least three years, to give any third party a
complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding
source code; or c) Accompany it with the information
you received as to the offer to distribute
corresponding source code.
The source code for a work means the preferred form
of the work for making modifications to it. For an
executable work, complete source code means all the
source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the
scripts used to control compilation and installation
of the executable.
4. Termination of Rights
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute
the Program except as expressly provided under this
License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and
will automatically terminate your rights under this
License. However, parties who have received copies,
or rights, from you under this License will not have
their licenses terminated so long as such parties
remain in full compliance.
5. Acceptance by Action
You are not required to accept this License, since
you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants
you permission to modify or distribute the Program
or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program,
you indicate your acceptance of this License to do
so.
6. Automatic Licensing to Recipients
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work
based on the Program), the recipient automatically
receives a license from the original licensor to
copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any
further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of
the rights granted herein.
7. Conflicts with Other Obligations
If, as a consequence of a court judgment or
allegation of patent infringement or for any other
reason, conditions are imposed on you that
contradict the conditions of this License, they do
not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy
simultaneously your obligations under this License
and any other pertinent obligations, then as a
consequence you may not distribute the Program at
all.
8. Geographical Limitations
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is
restricted in certain countries either by patents or
by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright
holder who places the Program under this License may
add an explicit geographical distribution limitation
excluding those countries.
9. Revised Versions of the GPL
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised
and/or new versions of the General Public License
from time to time. Such new versions will be similar
in spirit to the present version, but may differ in
detail to address new problems or concerns.
10. Requesting Exceptions
If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into
other free programs whose distribution conditions
are different, write to the author to ask for
permission. For software which is copyrighted by the
Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software
Foundation.
11. NO WARRANTY
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE,
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT
PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
12. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW WILL
ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM.
LICENSE INTERPRETATION AND USE CASES
If you publish, distribute or allow a third party to
use a copy of your product, the open source license
requires you to release your product source code and
automatically grants all third parties a license to
your product source code and the ability to use it
under the open source license.
Internal Use Exception
If you use the x265 Software under the open source
license and you publish, distribute or allow a third
party to use your product – then everyone is
automatically granted a license from you to use,
copy and distribute your product source code under
Version 2.0 of the GPL. If you are using the x265
Software as part of an internal video encoding
system and do not publish, distribute or allow a
third party to use your encoding system, then your
use under the open source license does not grant
third parties a license to the source code of your
system.
Open Source Disclosure Requirements
If you are required to disclose your source code,
the GPL requires that you disclose all the source
code of any software that includes or links to the
x265 Software or any portion of the x265 Software.
The "linkage" provision creates an expansive
obligation of the source code that must be
disclosed.
Downloading x265 Source Code
If you distribute a product that downloads or
requires the customer to download the x265 Software
(or any portion of it), then it is the same as
including the x265 Software in your product. You
cannot avoid your product being classified as a
distribution by having your product or customer
download the x265 Software.
Specific Use Cases
Hardware/Software Sales: If you sell
or perpetually license your product to a third party,
this is clearly a distribution and the open source license
automatically grants a license to all third parties and
requires the release of your product source code.
Term Licensing: If you create a copy
of your product and grant a customer the right to use
the product, whether you make money or not, this constitutes
a distribution and requires that you release your product
source code.
Internal Use: If you use your product
internally and do not distribute or allow third parties
to use it, you can use the x265 Software under the open
source license without triggering the automatic license
grant.
Cloud Based Software as a Service (SaaS)
The determining factor in most cases is
"distribution". In the case of cloud services, it
comes down to control – if the cloud service allows
the customer to control its use of the software
instance, then it constitutes a distribution. If you
can schedule multiple customers' video content on
the same software instance, then the service
provider is in control and it falls within the
Internal Use exception. If your customer gets
exclusive use of the server instance, then it is
effectively a distribution.
Mobile Apps
Since an app is being distributed to third parties
via app stores, the open source license
automatically grants a license and requires that you
release the source code for your app if it
incorporates x265 under the GPL.
Integration and Third-Party Development
Proprietary Software Integration: When
you incorporate proprietary components from vendors with
the x265 open source software, the vendor's proprietary
software becomes subject to the open source license if
they are linked into the same program. This is why most
developers choose a commercial license for proprietary
integrations.
Third Party Development: As long as
the developer assigns all their ownership rights to the
company, then there is no difference between internal
development and hiring a contractor. If the developer
is allowed to retain rights, then this becomes a distribution.
