Blog

I hope everyone is having a great summer! I have been very busy working on OpenShot 2.0 (of course), and have an update that is just too big to fit into a single post. So, I have broken this update into 3 parts for your reading enjoyment.

Texas Linux Fest (June 13 - 14)

Before I get into the details of this update, I wanted to quickly share my experience from Austin, TX @ Texas Linux Fest, which I attended in mid-June. My family (wife and two daughters) attended the show as well (which was awesome), and helped me run the OpenShot Booth!

My Family @ Texas Linux Fest

I met some incredible people, and had some very enlightening discussions. I even had a demo of OpenShot 2.0 ready to preview, but not much time to actually show it off. =) I also had a few different people offer to help out, and are now contributing to OpenShot!

However, one of the most interesting discussions I had was related to the open-source licensing of the OpenShot Video Library (libopenshot). This is the code that powers all the complicated video and audio editing functionality for OpenShot. More on this topic of licensing below.

Legal Battle

In late June, OpenShot was sucked into some legal conflicts related to trademarks and intellectual property. While I would love to discuss all the details, I am not allowed to discuss them at this time. However, everything worked out fine for OpenShot, but it certainly took some money and time away from me during the process.

Licensing

After some serious discussions with community members related to licensing for libopenshot, I have decided to officially change the license to LGPLv3. This is still a bit problematic, due to a GPLv3 license of a required JUCE-based libopenshot-audio library. But soon, I will make the GPL components optional during compiling, so it will be easier to maintain the LGPLv3 license on derivative works.

If you have no interest in reading open-source licenses... just know that we are switching the license of our main library to be more open, and allow more people to use it without violating our license agreement.

OpenShot Video Library Released (version 0.0.2)

I have actually made 2 releases of libopenshot in July, with another release coming towards the end of July. This marks the first official release related to the Kickstarter project! This is important, because it now allows me to build installers and package the library in a way that can be easily installed by end-users.

I now have working libopenshot installers / packages for the following OSes:

• Ubuntu / Mint (including daily builds / daily PPA)
• Debian (i.e. mentors.debian.net)
• Fedora (i.e. RPM Fusion)
• openSUSE (i.e. PackMan)
• Arch (i.e. AUR)
• Windows (was working... but libopenshot-audio is now breaking on Windows)
• Mac (still in heavy testing)

However, before these packages can be downloaded and installed (outside of some testers), I need to get them accepted into the different OSes official repositories. This is always a time consuming process, and I have been spending a percentage of my time working on this goal for the past 3 weeks (or so). NOTE: For Windows and Mac, I will not be pursing their software / app stores, but will just be releasing the DMG and MSI installers.

OpenShot Audio Library (powered by JUCE)

In early July, I updated the version of JUCE inside the OpenShot Audio Library (libopenshot-audio), which was done as part of my re-licensing efforts (discussed previously). I have also released the first 2 official versions of libopenshot-audio this month (more fruits from the Kickstarter project). However, the only drawback from this update are some compilation issues on Windows and MinGW64... which are pretty tricky to debug. So, if anyone wants to jump in and help me resolve some tricky C++ build issues related to JUCE and MinGW64, please send me an email. =)

More to Come in Parts 2 & 3

Improvements to the functionality and interface of OpenShot Video Editor 2.0 are coming in Part 2 of this update. Including a new video, screenshots, and lots of technical goodness! Then, in Part 3, I will be discussing installers for OpenShot Video Editor, source code release, release dates, schedule of final tasks, and more!

Thanks For Your Patience

Once again, I want to thank everyone for making this project possible and for your patience so far. Over the past 2 months, I have brought on 5 new contributors, made 4 official releases, built a half dozen packages / installers, successfully navigated some tricky legal issues, ran an exhibitor booth, and continued to push forward on the interface and final tasks for OpenShot 2.0. It has certainly been a longer road that I expected, but we are certainly nearing the end. =) So, THANK YOU for being so awesome!!!