[Libav-user] Libav, licensing, h.264

Brad O'Hearne brado at bighillsoftware.com
Wed Mar 27 04:58:54 CET 2013


I have a need for processing of h.264 video in a commercial (for sale) product. I am aware that there are more or less two flavors of FFmpeg, one with GPL'd code compiled in, and another with GPL'd code disabled from compilation. In general, GPL governs the former, while LGPL governs the latter. I'm not aware of the exact functional boundaries of each, but I am aware that libx264 is apparently GPL'd, so that is a no-op for any commercial product. 

My question is this: is there *any* h.264 processing capability within Libav that does not fall under GPL, that is usable in a commercial product, and if so what are its limitations? Can Libav be used to handle h.264 processing in a commercial product (obviously without libx264), or no? 

Thanks for the clarification. 

Cheers, 

Brad





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