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

[Jai Menon]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> 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.

However, the merging and cleanup was largely worked upon by a single
person (Rob), and even right now, I think only Rob is working on SBR
and/or whatever other tools are required for HE-AAC. That said, I'll
definitely try and help out with  ffaacenc though, but I guess better
skilled people are already working on it :)

-- 
Regards,

Jai