[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: Suspected GPL violation by Erightsoft "super"

[Alexey Sidelnikov]

Hello!


> Still, their product is proprietary,
> and they insist on it. I tried to get
> the source through their forum, but they
> of course won't give it:
> 
> http://www.erightsoft.net/Supforum.html
> Christoph

Following your discussion on that forum, can I ask you GPL-related 
question please? As it is said here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

"We believe that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of 
communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address 
space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what kinds of 
information are interchanged).

If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are 
definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run 
linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means 
combining them into one program.

By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication 
mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are 
used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs."

Well, from the first and third paragraphs I'd say it is clear that I can 
use ffmpeg.exe in non-GPL program, do you agree? I mean, just call it 
with some command line, and take its output.

The second paragraph explicitly prohibits "modules including in one EXE 
file", but I'd say it does not have the meaning of packing into 1 
zip/exe file, what would you say? If I provide 1 exe file with ffmpeg 
which runs, after decompression, as a separate process - is it violation 
of GPL license?

I'm sorry if this is not fully appropriate place to discuss these 
issues.. but I'm just curious ;)


Thanks,

Alexey