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

[Diego Biurrun]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 08:30:58PM +0530, Jai Menon wrote:
> On 4/29/09, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 04:45:58PM +1200, Paul Kendall wrote:
> >
> > > On Tuesday 28 April 2009 12:48:50 pm Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> >  > > 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?
> >  > >
> >  > > moving it under non free is a good idea, droping it is a good idea too
> >  > > but i guess people wont like it being droped.
> >  > >
> >  > > [...]
> >  > Please, no, don't drop it! Until ffaac can do HE-AACv2 it is needed by
> >  > folk that have DVB-T streams. More and more countries are using this
> >  > format for their digital broadcasts.
> >
> > You are talking about libfaaD, the decoder, not the encoder.
> >
> >  But if many people need and use it, dropping it should speed up the
> >  process of getting a replacement by leaps and bounds...
> 
> I _seriously_ doubt whether this kind of reverse psychology will work,
> but thats just my opinion.

Experience shows that your doubts are unfounded.  Just look how long it
took for the AAC decoder to reach maturity.  libfaad2 was a good enough
stopgap solution.  Had it not been available, ffaac would have been
finished much earlier, complete with HE-AAC support.

Diego