[FFmpeg-devel] Integrating ffprobe into FFmpeg?

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Thursday 2007-11-15 13:47:23 +0100, Aurelien Jacobs encoded:
> Stefano Sabatini wrote:
> 
> > On date Wednesday 2007-11-14 15:43:22 +0100, Alex Beregszaszi encoded:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > > the audio decoder function should return the size of the input buffer
> > > > *used*, while in libavcodec/nellymoserdec.c it actually returns the
> > > > size of the decompressed frame.
> > > > 
> > > > You can spot the problem immediately using for example my tool ffprobe
> > > > (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffprobe) which shows for each audio
> > > > nellymoser frame these informations (-show_frames):
> > > 
> > > What about importing that tool into ffmpeg?
> > 
> > I originally designed ffprobe to be a part of FF-mpeg (and indeed it
> > shares code/design with it), and to me it would be still a good idea
> > to integrate it in FF-mpeg (no code duplication, better integration
> > with FF-mpeg and easier accessibility for the FF-mpeg users), if the
> > others maintainers agree and are not too much bothered by the many
> > problems it still has.
> 
> I don't know if adding some GPLv3 code in FFmpeg is such a good idea.
> It would add to the licensing confusion.
> I would personally prefer seeing it licensed under LGPL or at least
> GPLv2 or later if it gets included in FFmpeg.

The licensing status of ffprobe is currently a mess (sorry for
that). The COPYING file contains the GPL3 license, while the -L option
shows the same license used by the libav* libraries according to the
CONFIG_GPL symbol, while the *.[ch] files headers state the adoption
of the LGPL.

In the case of inclusion in FF-mpeg, I'd change the license to LGPL to
comply with the rest of the ff* tools (if possible, I hope so).

Best regards.
-- 
Stefano Sabatini
Linux user number 337176 (see http://counter.li.org)