[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Libfaac not LGPL?

Diego Biurrun diego
Wed Apr 29 19:45:05 CEST 2009


On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 10:19:33PM +0530, Jai Menon wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 08:30:58PM +0530, Jai Menon wrote:
> >> On 4/29/09, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 04:45:58PM +1200, Paul Kendall wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > On Tuesday 28 April 2009 12:48:50 pm Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> >> > ?> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 04:45:37PM -0700, Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote:
> >> > ?> > > We had some discussions on #ffmpeg-devel and I asked the folks at #gnu
> >> > ?> > > about this:
> >> > ?> > >
> >> > ?> > > http://faac.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/faac/faac/libfaac/tns.c?r1=1.8&r2=
> >> > ?> > >1.9
> >> > ?> > >
> >> > ?> > > It appears that libfaac, despite declaring itself LGPL2.1, contains
> >> > ?> > > quite a few licenses... many of which are completely incompatible with
> >> > ?> > > the LGPL, such as the above.
> >> > ?> > >
> >> > ?> > > In theory, it still may be legal to distribute, as the LGPL linking
> >> > ?> > > exception *may* cover the linking of .c files with non-free licenses
> >> > ?> > > with .c files that have free licenses. ?However, either way, this
> >> > ?> > > places FAAC squarely under non-GPL territory... such that ffmpeg
> >> > ?> > > should require --enable-nonfree to link to it.
> >> > ?> > >
> >> > ?> > > Thoughts?
> >> > ?> >
> >> > ?> > moving it under non free is a good idea, droping it is a good idea too
> >> > ?> > but i guess people wont like it being droped.
> >> > ?> >
> >> > ?> > [...]
> >> > ?> Please, no, don't drop it! Until ffaac can do HE-AACv2 it is needed by
> >> > ?> folk that have DVB-T streams. More and more countries are using this
> >> > ?> format for their digital broadcasts.
> >> >
> >> > You are talking about libfaaD, the decoder, not the encoder.
> >> >
> >> > ?But if many people need and use it, dropping it should speed up the
> >> > ?process of getting a replacement by leaps and bounds...
> >>
> >> I _seriously_ doubt whether this kind of reverse psychology will work,
> >> but thats just my opinion.
> >
> > Experience shows that your doubts are unfounded. ?Just look how long it
> > took for the AAC decoder to reach maturity. ?libfaad2 was a good enough
> > stopgap solution. ?Had it not been available, ffaac would have been
> > finished much earlier, complete with HE-AAC support.
> 
> However, the merging and cleanup was largely worked upon by a single
> person (Rob), and even right now, I think only Rob is working on SBR
> and/or whatever other tools are required for HE-AAC.

Thanks for proving my point.

Diego



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