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Licensing Concerns #907

@nothingismagick

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@nothingismagick

I just reviewed the License Terms for downloading the evergreen installer at https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/ and am struggling with several implications and apparent omissions.

First of all, from the perspective of open source library developers like at Tauri, this licensing seems to make little sense. Agreeing to the license means that such projects would be forcing every library consumer (developer) to agree to these terms. This stifles open source innovation and might actually even conflict with MIT/Apache-2 licensing.

Solution: Offer a redistribution clause and consider how downstream consumers can confirm agreement.

Next, this is troubling because the language is either unclear or needlessly draconian:

4.    SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. 
Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you 
more rights despite this limitation, you will not (and have no right to):

d)   use the software for commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating activities;

So who is webview2 even for? Hobby projects? This clause seems to preempt any usage whatsoever...

Solution: If you mean that the licensing scheme should prevent people from repackaging webview2 as e.g. super-awesome-webview and selling it, then this clause needs clarification. Otherwise drop it.

And the real elephant in the room is ffmpeg licensing: https://ffmpeg.org/legal.html
There is no statement of lgpl compliance in accordance with ffmpeg's terms, and some organisations (like the Eclipse Foundation) will need this verification.

Solution: Since WebView redistributes Chromium, all Chromium open-source licenses (and any others like widevine) should be exposed in this license agreement. Furthermore, explicitly mention FFMPEG compilation flags used for Chromium, or provide a reference.

Pinging @kemitchell in case he wants to weigh in here.

Edit: Here is how you can determine what ffmpeg is used in (an admittedly out of date) Electron.

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