Merlin VA — Third-Party Notices
Merlin VA is built on open-source software. This file lists what it includes or depends on, under which licence, and what that means for you. It is incorporated into the End User Licence Agreement by reference.
Full licence texts for every component are available from the upstream projects linked below. Where a licence obliges us to make an offer, that offer is made in section 1 and section 6.
1. FFmpeg (LGPL) — the one with an obligation attached
Merlin VA decodes and analyses media through PyAV, whose distributed wheels bundle FFmpeg shared libraries. Those libraries are used under the
> GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 or later (LGPL-2.1+)
FFmpeg is © the FFmpeg developers. Source: <https://ffmpeg.org>. The full LGPL text is at <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html>.
The FFmpeg libraries in Merlin VA are unmodified and are dynamically linked. They are configured without --enable-gpl and without --enable-nonfree; no GPL-only or non-free FFmpeg component is included — in particular no libx264, libx265 or libpostproc. This is verified on every build by scripts/check-licences.sh, which fails the build if any GPL component appears in the bundle.
Your rights under the LGPL. You may modify the FFmpeg libraries and relink Merlin VA against your modified version. The FFmpeg dynamic libraries are shipped as separate files inside the application bundle, so replacing them requires no action from us.
Our written offer. For a period of three (3) years from the date you received the Software, we will provide, on request to [email protected] and at no charge beyond the cost of distribution, the exact FFmpeg source corresponding to the libraries distributed with your copy, together with the build configuration used.
Note: modifying these libraries invalidates Apple's code signature on the application bundle, and macOS will then refuse to open it unless you re-sign it yourself or remove the quarantine attribute. That is a restriction imposed by the operating system, not by us, and it does not limit the rights above.
2. PyInstaller bootloader (GPL-2.0 with exception)
The application's Python backend is frozen with PyInstaller, and the PyInstaller bootloader is present in the shipped binary.
PyInstaller is licensed GPL-2.0-or-later with an explicit bootloader exception, which permits distributing an application built with it under any licence of your choosing, including a proprietary one. Merlin VA relies on that exception. Being built with PyInstaller does not place Merlin VA under the GPL.
<https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/blob/develop/COPYING.txt>
3. Python components
| Component | Licence |
|---|---|
PyAV (av) | BSD-3-Clause — see section 1 for the bundled FFmpeg |
| faster-whisper | MIT |
| CTranslate2 | MIT |
| ONNX Runtime | MIT |
| Tokenizers | Apache-2.0 |
| huggingface_hub | Apache-2.0 |
| FastAPI | MIT |
| Starlette | BSD-3-Clause |
| Uvicorn | BSD-3-Clause |
| uvloop | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| httptools | MIT |
| watchfiles | MIT |
| websockets | BSD-3-Clause |
| Pydantic / pydantic-core | MIT |
| NumPy | BSD-3-Clause |
| Pillow | MIT-CMU (HPND) |
| psutil | BSD-3-Clause |
| xxhash | BSD-2-Clause |
| PyYAML | MIT |
| protobuf | BSD-3-Clause |
| Requests | Apache-2.0 |
| urllib3 | MIT |
| certifi | MPL-2.0 — see section 6 |
| ReportLab | BSD-3-Clause |
| pypdf | BSD-3-Clause |
| pypdfium2 | Apache-2.0 / BSD-3-Clause; bundles PDFium (BSD-3-Clause, © Google) |
| Anthropic Python SDK | MIT |
| OpenAI Python SDK | Apache-2.0 |
| truststore | MIT |
| joblib, threadpoolctl | BSD-3-Clause |
| filelock, platformdirs | Unlicense / MIT |
| tqdm | MPL-2.0 / MIT — see section 6 |
4. Rust components (application host)
| Component | Licence |
|---|---|
| Tauri, tauri-plugin-shell, -dialog, -opener | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| ed25519-dalek | BSD-3-Clause |
| sha2 (RustCrypto) | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| base64 | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| serde, serde_json | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| tokio | MIT |
A complete, machine-generated dependency inventory for the Rust host is available on request.
5. Frontend components
| Component | Licence |
|---|---|
| React, React DOM | MIT |
| Tailwind CSS | MIT |
| Vite | MIT |
| TypeScript | Apache-2.0 |
6. Weak-copyleft components (MPL-2.0)
certifi and tqdm are distributed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The MPL is file-level copyleft: it obliges us to make the source of those files available, not the source of Merlin VA.
Both are unmodified. Their source is available from <https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi> and <https://github.com/tqdm/tqdm>, and we will supply the exact versions used on request to [email protected].
7. Software you install yourself
These are not distributed with Merlin VA. You obtain them directly and your use of each is governed by its own licence, to which we are not a party.
| Component | Licence | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| DaVinci Resolve Studio | Commercial, Blackmagic Design | Required. Purchased separately. Merlin VA is not affiliated with Blackmagic Design. |
| Ollama | MIT | Serves the local models |
qwen2.5:7b-instruct | Apache-2.0 | Planning |
qwen2.5vl:7b | Apache-2.0 | Vision |
nomic-embed-text | Apache-2.0 | Library search |
phi3 | MIT | Low-memory fallback |
moondream | Apache-2.0 | Low-memory fallback |
Whisper large-v3-turbo | MIT (model weights, OpenAI) | Transcription |
Model output is not warranted. Transcripts, descriptions, tags and plans produced by these models may be wrong. Section 12 of the EULA applies.
8. Trademarks
DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci Resolve Studio, Fusion and Blackmagic Design are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackmagic Design Pty Ltd. Apple, macOS, Finder and Apple Silicon are trademarks of Apple Inc. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other marks belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify the products with which Merlin VA interoperates.
Merlin VA is an independent product, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.
Corrections to this file are welcome at [email protected]. If you believe a component is listed under the wrong licence, or is missing, please tell us and we will fix it.