[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Port x264 SSE2 deblocking code to H.264 decoder

[Jason Garrett-Glaser]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:36 AM, Reimar Doeffinger
<Reimar.Doeffinger at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 09:16:42PM -0800, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
>> I will however strongly object to remove any LGPL optimized function for
>> GPL ones. FFmpeg main license is LGPL for good reasons IMHO.
>
> I agree, GPL-only should be restricted as much as possible, otherwise
> calling FFmpeg a LGPL project becomes a joke.
> Personally I'd prefer if GPL-only was restricted to encoding and muxers,
> but not decoding or demuxing, because there you often don't have a choice
> to just use some other program/library and I think this is part of what
> we can do to help make sure existing content remains easily accessible
> for everyone.
> For encoding you can always tell people: there are enough formats, just
> choose one that has a library under a license you like.

Practically though, it doesn't make a serious difference unless it's a
functionality one.  For example, FAAD being GPL was annoying, because
before ffmpeg's native decoder, there *was no option* for LGPL
decoding of AAC.

But when its a couple-percent performance boost, suddenly things are
much less important and we can get away with GPL code because it
doesn't exactly significantly limit functionality for those that need
LGPL, especially since the vast majority of people who need really
fast h264 decoding are ordinary users watching their videos.  I doubt
they'd be happy about their decoding speed being limited because of
license bickering on ffmpeg-devel.

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