[FFmpeg-devel] Support master branch of OpenJPEG and Grok J2K codecs

Reimar Döffinger Reimar.Doeffinger at gmx.de
Mon Apr 4 21:16:06 CEST 2016


On Mon, Apr 04, 2016 at 10:51:23AM -0700, Timothy Gu wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 03, 2016 at 05:34:15PM -0400, Aaron Boxer wrote:
> Also it should be made clear that if Grok is linked into FFmpeg, the resulting
> binary is a mixture of AGPL and GPL works. If --enable-gpl or
> --enable-version3 is not enabled, the compilation should fail.
> 
> If there isn't a way to detect Grok from OpenJPEG, there should be one.
> 
> If it is not clear to you why we are so against AGPL, it is because it incurs
> additional restrictions on the work that we don't consider to be in the spirit
> of free software, regardless of what FSF says. But I think you already know
> about that.

The really huge, gigantic, elephant sized issue with AGPL for me is
that it is _completely_ unclear to me what you actually have to
do to fulfill the license requirements of that "frankenmonster".
No restrictions on use makes GPL very simple: if you don't
redistribute, you don't need to do anything.
What if you somehow got an OS image that happens to use
a FFmpeg compiled against AGPL components (without you being
aware, since you never use or care about the AGPL parts)
and then use FFmpeg to stream over the net (or even your proprietary
code), are you suddenly in violation of the license?
If the answer is "yes", I am against such a version of FFmpeg
working without each _use_ of it requiring a special action
that confirms users are aware of the license obligations.


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