[FFmpeg-devel] Linking against lame considered non-free?

[Reinhard Tartler]

For full context, please see
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.mp3.lame/5092

Short summary, the Lame licsense places additional restrictions on its
LGPL license, as seen in
http://lame.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lame/lame/README?view=markup:

09      This code is distributed under the GNU LESSER PUBLIC LICENSE
10	(LGPL, see www.gnu.org) with the following modification:
11
12	1. If you determine that distribution of LAME requires a patent license,
13         and you obtain a patent license, you may distribute LAME even though
14         redistribution of LAME may also require a patent license.
15
16	2. You agree not to enforce any patent claims for any aspect of
17         MPEG audio compression, or any other techniques contained in
18         the LAME source code.


AFAIUI, these limitations also apply to conveyings like libraries and
executables of ffmpeg that are linked against a copy of libmp3lame,
which render them unredistributable.

Please explain me why I'm wrong here; otherwise I guess we'd need to
adjust configure to make an appropriate statement, just like we
currently do for libfaac, etc..


-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4