Tvheadend

All,

with a bit longer delay than I expected, we have 4.2.1 release with a huge list of changes. Enjoy!

Jaroslav

All,

Having recently posted to tell you all that I'd got http://apt.tvheadend.org back on-line supporting a more comprehensive suite of builds. I've now decided to follow dreamcat4 and move the official hosting to bintray (I needed a bit of time to investigate it and understand that it's a much better solution).

So the existing auto-build system that feeds http://apt.tvheadend.org has now been altered to post stuff to a new "official" bintray location.

It's my strong recommendation that people downloading packages for Ubuntu / Debian use the new repository as apt.tvheadend.org may eventually stop serving content (though no intention to do that any time soon).

For more details please see AptRepository

Adam

All,

After several years of being unsupported the official apt repository, http://apt.tvheadend.org, is now back on-line.

Unfortunately in my haste to get this up and running I had forgotten that many users may still be porting at the out of date repository and relying on it not updating their systems.

Unfortunately as now documented in AptRepository, the stable repository now includes a nightly build of the stable branch, which at time of writing is release/4.0. And as a result of my haste this has caused many people's systems to be updated from a very old 3.4 to 4.0.8.

I apologise profusely for this. I would normally have ensured plenty of warning, but was simply eager to do something useful after nearly 2 years away from the project.

I can only say that I personally upgraded to a 4.0 release a few months back and before that was using something very similar to 4.0 for some 2 years (and a I'm not usually an early adopter).

While it does have a considerably different configuration system (mostly my fault!), I can honestly say that in my absence perexg has done an excellent job in keeping the project going and has been improving and fixing things left, right and centre. So I suggest you give it a go!

If people do feel particularly aggrieved I will consider creating a special case 3.4 repo that people can use to downgrade, and I believe your configuration should have been backed up during the upgrade process so recovery shouldn't be too traumatic. But eventually you're probably going to want to update to keep up with latest changes, particularly if you integrate with Kodi (where there are many improvements).

Adam

We successfully finished the 4.2 development pushing over-the-air ATSC EPG code to the main repository.

The main repository is in the alpha release stage now. The new version will be released in few weeks.

Please, test and report all bugs (but check for duplicates).

See roadmap: http://tvheadend.org/versions/59

Tvheadned received support for H.265/HEVC video coding standard including the transcoding feature. Check the latest development code.

We're looking to replace the https://tvheadend.org frontend site with a new "sexy" design fit for the modern age.

We've had several people comment that redmine makes the site look a bit tired and some have even thought, at first glance, the project was dead.

If you're an experience web designer and fancy having a go at a new site design, put together a basic mockup and post a link in #hts (or on this thread).

The site will need to be a basic frontend explaining what TVH is, pointing to key resources, including github, user docs, wiki, forum and issue tracking (for now the last three will be kept under redmine, but it's not impossible we could change this).

It might also be worth considering a new logo design, so if anyone has any ideas for that, feel free to post here or #hts.

Adam

The i18n support is being added to tvheadend these days. We are looking for translators - Internationalization .

This site now runs behind cloudflare and apparently it takes 24 hours for the SSL to be fully configured so from now ( Sat Mar 21 17:50 CET 2015 ) and for the next 24 hours SSL will not work correctly.

All,

Just a quick update on the previous article. I'm afraid things stalled on the re-licensing effort. There was unfortunately some discord within the developer community which meant that we have not been able to get full buy-in and unfortunately the amount of code that cannot be covered is not insignificant.

However we have decided that we still believe that re-licensing is the best direction for the project and we're going to go ahead with the process, albeit with some minor changes. The main thing is that we will have to deal with the fact that all code cannot be covered.

The manner in which we will do this is on a file by file basis, and as CLAs are received, we will update headers (to include new license copyright etc..) and we will track which files cannot be covered. These will be clearly marked and the LICENSE file will be updated to make this clear. We will attempt to gradually phase this code out of the project but until then there will be some barrier to people fully utilising the new license.

Clearly this is not going to be a trivial effort, and I've already hit the first snag as the tool we were planning to use to track our CLAs is having some technical difficulties (hopefully they're being looked at).

Developers, you will hopefully receive an email shortly regarding signing the CLA. Either once the tool is fixed, or we decide to use an alternative.

Users, you don't need to do anything however be aware that some functionality currently in master may be removed before the next release to comply with the new licensing requirements.

Regards
Adam (on behalf of the Team)

Many of you are probably aware of the message I put out last month regarding the state of the project. Whether it was a happy coincidence or was spurred on by the announcement there has been some increased input into the project and I thank people for that. Let's just hope I can find the time to keep up with the reviewing of submitted code! Or persuade people to join the core team!

One topic that was raised in response to my announcement was that of licensing, and specifically the limitations that the GPLv3 license could have on potential commercial input. Now this is something that was not new to me, and indeed when I first discussed with Andreas opening the project up to the community we did discuss the topic and the relative merits. But at the time it was deemed too much effort to investigate further,

However things have changed since then and we've decided that we are going to push ahead with various efforts that could help put the project on a better footing going forward. In response to this we're doing 2 key things:

1. We're setting up a UK company, Tvheadend Foundation CIC. The CIC stands for Community Interest Company. It's a not-for-profit structure, that's somewhat similar to a charity, but with slightly less regulation. Really the project isn't necessarily big enough to warrant forming such an entity, however to properly handle the licensing changes we are planning, it's an unfortunate side effect.

2. We're going to be asking all contributors to sign a Contributor License Agreement. This will confer on the company/project a full license to do with the software as we see fit, including potentially re-licensing (though the specifics of the CLA will carefully limit what licenses would be allowable). I have already sent out an initial email to get provisional responses on the proposal, this was very positive and most people responded in the affirmative. There are a few that have not responded and we will consider our options regarding those, but they represent a relatively small percentage of the code base.

Our initial intention is NOT to change the GPLv3 license, at least not immediately, at least one of the core team (that will also be a Director of the company) is not entirely convinced with the original proposal to re-license using GPLv2. However we've agreed on this approach as it will give us the potential to change in the future if we believe an opportunity presents itself that would provide clear benefit to the project if we were to re-license using a less restrictive license.

I will try and keep people informed and those of you that have contributed code, whether it be present in the current code base or not, expect to receive another email from me regarding signing of the new CLA.

Regards
Adam (on behalf of the Team)