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

[Kostya]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 04:12:29PM +0100, Robert Swain wrote:
> 2009/4/29 Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de>:
> > 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.
> 
> Sounds reasonable.

Alternatively you can always fork off. But it's better to finish
ffaacenc (yes, I'm selfish).
 
> > But dropping libfaac support might be a better idea. ?Does anybody need
> > it for internal development? ?Kostya, Rob?
> 
> I haven't touched the AAC encoder yet so it's up to Kostya and Alex in
> my opinion. I have used it to generate streams for benchmarking in the
> past, but I can just as well use the FAAC CLI. It would be more of an
> annoyance for converting to h.264 + AAC in mp4 really.
> 
> If we drop it, I'm sure it will wreak havoc in #ffmpeg and we'll
> either have to tell them to use a specific revision or use 0.5. We're
> already telling people to use 0.5 for vhook because libavfilter isn't
> done yet.
> 
> So I'm not keen on dropping it until a replacement is ready, because
> it is heavily used. Maybe it depends on how close our encoder is to
> being ready for trunk and whether dropping FAAC will actually bring
> about any incentive to the developers working on the AAC encoder.

Well, Alex Converse has started making his contributions.

> I
> somehow doubt it will affect Kostya that scores of people in #ffmpeg
> and on FFmpeg-user are wondering why libfaac support has disappeared.
> :)

Well, free procmail rule and they won't bother you as well :P
Also looks like not all devs like to visit #ffmpeg and answer questions
about transcoding to .flv
 
> Regards,
> Rob