[FFmpeg-devel] Proposal: Homebrew tap for FFmpeg

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

On Fri, 8 Feb 2019, at 19:06, Werner Robitza wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks for your comments.
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 10:03 AM Jean-Baptiste Kempf <jb at videolan.org> wrote:
> > Why do something special for homebrew, and not for all the other distributions?
> > Why is homebrew different? Are you going to merge all .spec files from all Linux distributions too?
> 
> I don't think it's really productive to talk about other Linux
> distributions in this thread. That is really a different topic.

A contrario, this is the exact same topic.
Homebrew 2.0 is now cross-platform and is just a distribution packaging like any other "ports".
I don't see why this project should put one distribution mechanism before another.

Why not MSys2, why not Chocolatey, why not a BSD port? Those are not linux distributions.
What about macports, which is also on OSX, like Homebrew?

I disagree that there is something so special in Homebrew, that warrants it to be an exception to all the other distribution systems, especially since now Homebrew competes will all the other distribution systems.

> > > That creates a bit of a messy situation, as users are expecting to be
> > > able to build ffmpeg with additional libraries, including nonfree ones
> > > such as fdk-aac. This is no longer easily doable.
> >
> > Helping people to build non-free distributions of FFmpeg is a very weird and dubious goal.
> > This is just helping other people violate the FFmpeg license.
> 
> That is a matter of personal viewpoint contrasted with general opinion
> about non-free FFmpeg, which I am 1) probably not the right person to
> discuss with, given my lack of presence on this mailing list and 2)
> the fact that the proposed formula simply mirrors what is already
> possible. I may be missing the full picture or developer consensus
> about how to handle this. I understand that there are folks who are
> very passionate about this topic, and that others are not. I can only
> observe that end users have the technical possibilities to build
> FFmpeg in a non-free and non-redistributable fashion. I don't see why
> it would be necessary to artificially restrict users in doing so.

Those are 2 different things: 
- artificially restrict users in doing something,
- advertising and encouraging those capabilities and behaviors.

You can allow the users to do something, see the ffmpeg configure.
But advertising and encouraging those officially (from an official Github account) is very different.



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Jean-Baptiste Kempf -  President
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