Monday, August 17, 2009

Is it possible to develop a free/open source and legal CD/DVD mastering and DVD solution software?

I plan to develop a free/open source CD/DVD mastering software in the future with the following features:



1. Burn all types of discs (data, audio, and video CD/DVD)



2. DVD authoring and Video editing / conversion.



3. Audio/Video Player (the included DVD decoder cannot be used with other video player)



4. Backup computer files.



5. ISO file creation.



6. disc copying (does not support the copyright-protected DVD.).



I will not use the GPL license. Instead, I will create my own license and include the sentence "This software should only be used for legal purposes. If you try to do any illegal things with this software, including but not limited to copyrighted disc protection, the developers of this software will not be responsible.". And, the person who modify the source code must submit the compiled and non-compiled source code to the other developers to gain approval before they can upload it to any website.



If any features are illegal, how to make it legal without remove it?



Is it possible to develop a free/open source and legal CD/DVD mastering and DVD solution software?ducati



You can create such software, but you can't use any truly open sourced libraries or closed source libraries to do so, as that would violate their respective licenses.



Likely if you found anything under a FreeBSD license you could do it, but any solution would be limited to the FreeBSD world, which is not much of an end market for that type of software.



Your proposed license would not be a valid open source license - see http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd



Likely no one would use it or further develop it because there are plenty of reputable closed source programs in that area, and zillions of truly open source ones for many platforms.



Especially without any recognized leadership experience, you will not be able to put together a developer group or support group in order to make it worthwhile.



Also, calling your sw "open source" will probably bring down the wrath of the open source community, including certain legal issues surrounding intellectual property you are not prepared to deal with.



Sorry.

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