[FFmpeg-devel] using ffmpeg framework in commercial product

[Jason Garrett-Glaser]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Massimiliano Mazzeschi
<max at mantrics.com> wrote:
> Hi
> We are developping a commercial product, and we need some
> clarification about the policy for using ffmpeg executable
> and libraries
>
> - Scenario1
> ? we would use the ffmpeg executable to perform a transcoding.
> ? We have developped an application driven from our framework,
> ? that simply build a command line and exec the ffmpeg.exe
> ? with parameters.
> ? We would use the GPL version of ffmpeg.exe (just an external
> ? executable, without any modification, and no GPL code in our
> ? commercial product)
> ? ? ? - Can we use it, without infringement of the GPL License ?

Yes.  As long as you call the ffmpeg executable instead of linking it,
you can use the GPL version with no restrictions on the workings of
the calling program.

> ? ? ? - Can we distribute it (in our cd-media, ftp, or other) ?
> ? ? ? Or we can just suggest the user to download the package
> ? ? ? form ffmpeg website ?

As long as you distribute the source that was used to build the ffmpeg
you are distributing along with the license, you can distribute it.
You can also distribute an offer for the source (i.e. a notice as to
where a user can acquire it) and provide a download package on your
website.  Note that a link to ffmpeg.org for the source is not
sufficient; you need to have the actual specific source package used
to build that particular ffmpeg.

> ? - Scenario2
> ? in another part of the application we would like to use libavcodec,
> ? libavformat, libautil, and libswscale to manage multimedia files.
> ? we have written a glue library to let our sw modules use easly
> ? ffmpeg libraries read/write feature.
> ? Also in this case we would like to use the GPL version of the
> ? libraries. Does it implies to distribute our s/w library under
> ? GPL license ?

Correct.

> ? If so, as we can't distribute under GPL our commercial product,
> ? is it possible to avoid this using the LGPL version ?

Correct as well.  The LGPL version can be linked from a program of any
license as long as you follow the rules of the LGPL.

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