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

[Diego Biurrun]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 12:28:57PM -0400, Alex Converse wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Jason Garrett-Glaser
> <darkshikari at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 6:57 PM, compn <tempn at twmi.rr.com> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:48:50 +0200, 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.
> >>
> >> anyone email author for relicense ?
> >
> > You mean Texas Instruments?
> 
> We could still try to lobby them for a relicense. TI has much better
> open source relations now than it did a decade ago when that code was
> written. Furthermore, MPEG required them to release it under that
> particular license. (But they still can re-release it under any
> license they want.)

Go right ahead.

Diego