PulseAudio 15 Released With Bluetooth Improvements, Better Hardware Support

[harre]

Nice that Sennheiser GSX 1000 gets officially supported. I had some issues with it and needed to do some manual tweaks to get it working.

https://github.com/evilphish/sennheiser-gsx-1000

I had same problem with pipewire, but after filing a bug report a fix was out quickly and no manual fixing was needed.

[holunder]

How can I check which codec is used? Connected via an Android device which defaults to AptX, Android dev settings here default to AptX in codec settings, which means this connection only supports SBC. Arch Linux.

Edit: pactl list
Just SBC, I was right… What is wrong? libopenaptx + libldac + pulseaudio-bluetooth

[khanich]

The maintainer of libopenaptx states in libopenaptx's README file:


Pulseaudio and PipeWire are both Freedesktop projects. Seems the author is more keen on acting like a prima donna.

Well, Pulseaudio is LGPL2.1+ and libopenaptx is GPL3. So there may actually be a licensing problem.
So I started to research:

• Pulseaudio has the option to become GPL-licensed , if a library needs it.
• Pulseaudio can use FFTW, gdbm and LIRC (these are explicitly mentioned). But gdbm and FFTW are GPL2 and LIRC is GPL3 (no "and newer versions"), so you can't use all of them at the same time from a licensing pov (their incompatibility isn't mentioned).
• Pulseaudio has a GPL licensing file for such cases, but it only supports GPL2 there (not GPL2+).
• I only found something aptx related together with bluez and GStreamer.

This seems a bit fishy to me, but Let's go to PipeWire:

• PipeWire is licensed under the MIT license.
• The only GPL and LGPL libraries they mention are libspa-alsa.so, but that only makes it LGPL (they don't mention the version), and libjackserver.so, but that that makes it GPL2 and is as such incompatible with GPL3 of libopenaptx.
• They use quite a lot of plugins which may or may not be compatible (didn't check these), but they don't use libopenaptx but bluez5-codec-aptx, although I failed to find this one. But a comment said this is an open source implementation by Qualcomm and in the bluez repo is a file under the Apache 2 license.

Seems better, but Let's go to GStreamer:
I found the use of libopenaptx and a restriction of GStreamer to use v0.2.0 as the maximum version which is as it seems the last version where they were allowed to use it. Apparently the libopenaptx project changed in the following version from LGPL2.1 to GPL3. Thanks to the upgrade term of the LGPL actually possible. They also introduced the restriction of freedesktop.org projects and Collabora at the same time.
From a legal pov libopenaptx' change actually sounds ok to me.

The question is more their reasoning. Well, I am just going to ask.

[hexavolta]

now that the pulseaudio project feels threatened by pipewire,,,competition is good but i wonder if both join hands under one roof would result in more good for the sake of the father project,a dream that would make Linux more enjoyable

[oiaohm]

Well, Pulseaudio is LGPL2.1+ and libopenaptx is GPL3. So there may actually be a licensing problem.
So I started to research:

• Pulseaudio has the option to become GPL-licensed , if a library needs it.
• Pulseaudio can use FFTW, gdbm and LIRC (these are explicitly mentioned). But gdbm and FFTW are GPL2 and LIRC is GPL3 (no "and newer versions"), so you can't use all of them at the same time from a licensing pov (their incompatibility isn't mentioned).
• Pulseaudio has a GPL licensing file for such cases, but it only supports GPL2 there (not GPL2+).
• I only found something aptx related together with bluez and GStreamer.

This seems a bit fishy to me, but Let's go to PipeWire:

• PipeWire is licensed under the MIT license.
• The only GPL and LGPL libraries they mention are libspa-alsa.so, but that only makes it LGPL (they don't mention the version), and libjackserver.so, but that that makes it GPL2 and is as such incompatible with GPL3 of libopenaptx.
• They use quite a lot of plugins which may or may not be compatible (didn't check these), but they don't use libopenaptx but bluez5-codec-aptx, although I failed to find this one. But a comment said this is an open source implementation by Qualcomm and in the bluez repo is a file under the Apache 2 license.

Seems better, but Let's go to GStreamer:
I found the use of libopenaptx and a restriction of GStreamer to use v0.2.0 as the maximum version which is as it seems the last version where they were allowed to use it. Apparently the libopenaptx project changed in the following version from LGPL2.1 to GPL3. Thanks to the upgrade term of the LGPL actually possible. They also introduced the restriction of freedesktop.org projects and Collabora at the same time.
From a legal pov libopenaptx' change actually sounds ok to me.

The question is more their reasoning. Well, I am just going to ask.

https://github.com/pali/libopenaptx/blob/master/README

NO read the readme. The developer of libopenaptx has stated that freedesktop and Collabora cannot use it. Because they use a code of conduct. GPLv3 it self does not forbid using a code of conduct. Yes once you remove all project using code of conduct from being able to use something that basically rules out all major Linux distributions.

Basically libopenaptx is useless garbage for the Linux desktop.

[brent]

The libopenaptx thing is quite ridiculous. Usage restrictions are not in any way or form acceptable for Open Source or Free Software.

It doesn't really matter, though, the version of libopenaptx before the license change was already forked into libfreeaptx and that is what PipeWire is using now.

[khanich]

https://github.com/pali/libopenaptx/blob/master/README

NO read the readme. The developer of libopenaptx has stated that freedesktop and Collabora cannot use it. Because they use a code of conduct. GPLv3 it self does not forbid using a code of conduct. Yes once you remove all project using code of conduct from being able to use something that basically rules out all major Linux distributions.

Basically libopenaptx is useless garbage for the Linux desktop.

Did you actually read the full README?
His reasoning (as stated in there) is that freedesktop and Collabora abuse their Code of Conduct to steal Copyright.

[khanich]

Ok, so I asked and researched more from open discussions, Let me begin from the beginning:

This whole mess started December 2019. Pali created a Merge Request at pulseaudio for using libopenaptx which he created.
He received some feedback which he incorporated and then nothing really happened except trying to essentially abuse him; for example he was asked to rework a whole subsystem, which has nothing to do with this Merge Request. At some point and after similar big Merge requests by others which got merged in a matter of days, he got a bit pissed and asked about how it stands around this Merge request. Following that a XOrg maintainer temporarily banned him, officially for breaking the CoC, but that was only specified (multiple weeks) later. Some other people asked why and they got also banned for that, additionally Pali got perma-banned too.
Following that Pali retracted the MR by other means and asked them to not merge his work.
This so far is fine for the most part (I still don't get his perma-ban, but well), but then something REALLY interesting happened: Somebody made a patch based upon his work (if you compare the 2 patchsets, you can see that it's Pali's with some additions) and REMOVED his Copyright. If you look at PulseAudio source code, you can see that at the beginning of each file there is a Copyright-notice about who holds copyright to the file. Because 2 people worked on the file, both should be there since both hold Copyright to it, but that is not the case. Additionally, in the Merge Request (which was merged) Pali was only mentioned as "a developer who was recently banned" instead of by name.
This caused Pali to change the license. Also, in his opinion this is a license break which would cause Article 8 of the LGPL to become active (a retrospective right termination).

In a whole, quite a mess and the fact the there are quite a lot of deleted messages doesn't help...

[khanich]

The libopenaptx thing is quite ridiculous. Usage restrictions are not in any way or form acceptable for Open Source or Free Software.

It doesn't really matter, though, the version of libopenaptx before the license change was already forked into libfreeaptx and that is what PipeWire is using now.

Usage restriction are disallowed, but this is an Access restriction which are allowed.

[finalzone]

Glad pulse is still getting updates for now. PipeWire can’t see any of the audio devices on my system (hdmi or USB DAC) so it’s impossible to use it. Pulse only for me, for a while longer.

It seems a bug on either the hardware or the distribution because PipeWire (0.3.32 at the time of writing) runs smoothly on HDMI devices (Samsung TV 55 inch) connected with 2018 HP Envy x360 Ryzen 5 as tested on Fedora 34 via HDMI hub.

PipeWire uses libpulse for optimal compatibility as possible through pipewire-pulseaudio.