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

[Diego Biurrun]

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?

It's no different than AMR, so we should require --enable-nonfree.

But dropping libfaac support might be a better idea.  Does anybody need
it for internal development?  Kostya, Rob?

Diego