A developer whose publisher account was deleted from Unity criticized ``Unity's LGPL exposure is random based on reports from users''


by

Jillian Northrup

The game engine ' Unity ' developed by Unity Technologies provides many tools called ' assets ' that can be used to create games. Martin Finkel , a developer who has been distributing assets called `` VLC for Unity '' in Unity since 2019, has published on his blog how his Unity publisher account was deleted and his criticism of Unity. .

Unity's Open-Source Double Standard: the ban of VLC - mfkl
https://mfkl.github.io/2024/01/10/unity-double-oss-standards.html



Since December 2019, Mr. Finkel has been distributing the asset 'VLC for Unity' that runs

VLC media player on Unity. Regarding VLC for Unity, Finkel said, 'It's a bridge between the game engine Unity and the multimedia engine VLC, allowing Unity-based games to build their own media players based on VLC technology.' says.

According to Finkel, VLC for Unity is available in Windows, Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and Android versions, and many developers have downloaded this asset.

However, in the summer of 2023, Mr. Finkel received an email from Unity stating that ``VLC for Unity (Android version), VLC for Unity (UWP version), and VLC for Unity (Windows version) have become deprecated assets.'' It was sent to me. An email from Unity read: 'We have received reports that these assets have dependencies on the LGPL license, in violation of Section 5.10.4 of the Provider Agreement . After our investigation, these packages are The decision has been made not to return it to the Asset Store.'



LGPL is a

copyleft free software license published by the Free Software Foundation , and is a license for libraries that are intended to be linked to other programs. Mr. Gamby, a developer who created the LGPL in 1991, said , ``At the time of its creation in 1991, I clarified the idea of ``free software'' and worked to popularize that concept.''

On the other hand, Unity explicitly prohibits applying the LGPL to its own assets and distributing content that applies the LGPL. As a result, Mr. Finkel's publisher account was deleted .

In response to these decisions, Mr. Finkel said, ``We presented Unity with remedial measures such as removing LGPL code from assets, but Unity basically said, ``Even if you remove LGPL code, it cannot be returned to the asset store.'' 'We have not wavered from our position.'



'Interestingly, hundreds of assets, including those that allow

FFmpeg to be used on Unity, remain in Unity's asset store even though they contain LGPL code. Apparently, unless someone reports them, , it appears that the detection of assets containing LGPL is done at random.'

Furthermore, Finkel says, ``Unity is built on libraries that include LGPL code such as LAME , libiconv , Libwebsockets , and websockify-js .''

In conclusion, Finkel said, ``Games built with Unity that use the LGPL will inevitably rely on LGPL code by default. 'I am not allowed to post assets,' he said, strongly criticizing Unity for ' double standards .'

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