Unity’s Open-Source Double Standard: the ban of VLC

Clearly, the legal team got bad information and made it part of their agreement. Like the article says, not only do tons of Unity assets use LGPL dependencies, but Unity uses LGPL assets themselves. Even shipped games created using Unity use LGPL assets. The intent was probably only to screen out GPL dependencies. For those who don&#x27;t know, there&#x27;s a huge difference between the GPL and LGPL. The LGPL is specifically designed to allow proprietary applications to link to open-source libraries without requiring the proprietary application’s source code to be released, provided certain conditions are met. This is particularly true when the LGPL-licensed library is used in a way that allows users to modify or replace it independently of the proprietary application.<p>In contrast, the GNU General Public License (GPL) has stricter requirements. If your software incorporates GPL-licensed code, the entire derivative work must also be licensed under the GPL, which includes releasing the source code.

Unity&#x27;s lawyers continue killing the company, not a big surprise there.<p>I used to work there, proud of their technical accomplishments, ashamed of pretty much everything else.

Edit: nevermind, they are in fact affiliated, and most of the core VLC devs work at VideoLabs. I&#x27;ve kept the original comment below.<p>This blog post links to the &quot;VideoLab Store&quot;, hosted at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;videolabs.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;videolabs.io</a>, which prominently uses a logo extremely similar but not identical to the VLC (which stands for VideoLAN, not VideoLab) logo. Their homepage even goes as far as displaying &quot;Hire the VLC team&quot; as its headline.<p>As far as I&#x27;m aware, VideoLab has nothing to do with the VideoLAN non-profit, and it very much seems like they are intentionally trying to mislead people into thinking that they are the developers of VLC.

Please correct me if I am wrong here.<p>From my understanding, using LGPL v2 code in console releases is fine since v2 does not have a tivoization clause (i.e. even if the end-user cannot re-link the program because the platform is locked down, that&#x27;s still ok).<p>However, websockify.js (and perhaps other dependencies) are LGPL v3, which means they cannot be included on a platform like the Nintendo Switch as the end-user cannot replace that component.<p>Is Unity excluding such components on locked down platforms, or are they simply in violation of LGPL v3?

I <i>really</i> would like to use Unity for projects. I actually really like the editor, the API and the ability for me to set up a lot of tooling quite easily for people who are not tech-savvy in-editor. Unity just makes it so difficult for me every step of the way with hostile behaviour towards its users, the twenty different beta packages they are Totally Making Stable Next Year, I Swear, the _harshly_ degrading performance on even just empty projects..<p>I&#x27;m mainly using Godot now and it&#x27;s nice but it just doesn&#x27;t quite compare.

Godot ftw.<p>Unity is a bad business decision nowadays. If I had to pick something commercial I&#x27;d rather pick Epic Games who at least uses lawyers to fight Apple instead of f*ing with open source devs.

Interesting 5.10.4 does not seem to exist in the provider agreement? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;unity.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;provider" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;unity.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;provider</a><p>At one point this used to contain the clause:<p>&gt; 5.10.4 Provider represents and warrants that its Assets shall not contain (a) any software licensed under the GNU General Public License or GNU Library or Lesser General Public License, or any other license with terms that include a requirement to extend such license to any modification or combined work and provide for the distribution of the combined or modified product’s source code upon demand so that Customer content becomes subject to the terms of such license; or (b) any software that is a modification or derivative of any software licensed under the GNU General Public License or Library or Lesser Public License, or any other license with terms similar thereto so that Customer content become subject to the terms of such license.<p>However this was removed sometime between December 3rd and December 12th according to the Wayback Machine.

&gt; games built with Unity depend on LGPL code by default (hello glibc!)<p>So I&#x27;m being needlessly pedantic here and this doesn&#x27;t necessarily go against the OP&#x27;s point, but since I find this sort of stuff interesting I&#x27;d like to point out that glibc is actually GPL not LGPL. There is however an alternate license that applies to programs which link against glibc, with the intention being that the GPL prevents you from distributing glibc as part of a non-Free compiler. I&#x27;m not sure of how exactly this is expressed in the legalese but that was my understanding of it.

Unity again showing their hostility. Perma-banning developers for this reason is crazy.

No surprise here. Unity is such a horrible company.

We moved away from Unity a few years ago when they introduced their updated licensing plan. I believe they backtracked on it almost immediately but we are still happy with our decision.

Previous discussion (Jan 2024): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38964972">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38964972</a>

I don&#x27;t know if VLC itself is even legal in countries that enforce software patents.

I thought most dev stores have prohibitions against GPL and LGPL code like this? Epic&#x27;s Fab distribution agreement says you can&#x27;t use LGPL &quot;unless you are merely dynamically linking a shared library&quot; which is obviously impossible for them to enforce and not technically feasible on some gaming platforms.<p>The Godot store seems to allow LGPLv3 licensed code which is interesting.<p>Unity themselves using LGPL code isn&#x27;t related because presumably they can control the way in which it is used, unlike a third party plug-in.

[2024]?

Only madman would develop anything with Unity after last fiasco.

Unity is actually <i>permanently banning</i> accounts for uploading a package that they decree has now been <i>deprecated</i>? What are they smoking?

I’ve read a bit this post and the gitlab repo link but I still have no idea if it’s about having a VLC desktop player playing Unity assets &#x2F; games, or a plugin for Unity to have a little VLC player inside the games.. or something else ?

Every time I think about using Unity they remind me why I&#x27;m right in preferring something fully open source that isn&#x27;t gate keeping my use of it.

They removed someone’s entire app and they say “sorry for the inconvenience”

Sure would be a shame if someone went through the unity store and reported every single LGPL asset to Unity legal.

did your app threaten their advertising network or revenue perhaps?

Can the link please be updated to note that this is from 2024?

&gt; After months of slow back-and-forth over email trying to find a compromise, including offering to exclude LGPL code from the assets, Unity basically told us we were not welcome back to their Store, ever. Even if we were to remove all LGPL code from the Unity package.<p>It&#x27;s high time the EU clamps down on Unity as well and classifies them as a gatekeeper. This behavior is absolutely unhinged.

Ugh.

Unfortunately for these guys, even if they have come up with the right solution - their own store - it doesn’t matter from the POV of commercial success. Right solutions are often NOT financially successful.

I remember that VLC could not get into iOS App Store for the same reason, and the story about it was spun by everyone and their dog. Ffmpeg is there because it doesn’t have this kind of PR, and that’s it.

Another reason for people to ditch it and use Godot.

It is amazing to me the commentary confusing GPL and LGPL on this site. The misinformation being spread about the LGPL, or just assuming the LGPL is the same as the GPL is mind boggling. I can&#x27;t be to surprised, I guess. GPL happens after the L, and of course, we know GPL &quot;doesn&#x27;t allow commercial applications&quot; right? So that&#x27;s all we need to discuss.<p>Seriously, it&#x27;s just four characters, and doesn&#x27;t take long to look up without just assuming it&#x27;s the same as the GPL.<p>The argument &quot;the lawyers saw GPL in LGPL and just made an assumption&quot; is all the more plausible when you have people in the field who make the same mistake.

Big companies hate GPL<p>No surprise here

I find popularity of LGPL licenses a bit weird.<p>Allows:<p>- Commercial use of the software<p>- Commercial use of the source code for projects that run on the company&#x27;s servers or internally<p>- Commercial use of the library is allowed if dynamically linked<p>Blocks:<p>- Commercial use of the source code for local apps that run on user&#x27;s device<p>- Commercial use of the library if statically linked for local apps that run on user&#x27;s device<p>I would expect a licence like MPL to be more popular than LGPL.

Not trying to play devils advocate, but it goes both ways. There are proprietary libraries in a lot of solutions too. The LGPL is under many distributed closed solutions that are sold for profit, so I think its WEEE bit of the kettle calling .. ya you get it. I don&#x27;t want to turf war, but its more systemic than you probably think. In this case, its just the pry-bar used that the risk to blow up the entire community of developed software with open libraries.<p>Tread lightly maybe.