[FFmpeg-devel] Support master branch of OpenJPEG and Grok J2K codecs

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Mon, Apr 04, 2016 at 03:48:38PM -0400, Aaron Boxer wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 3:16 PM, Reimar Döffinger <Reimar.Doeffinger at gmx.de>
> wrote:
> 
> > The really huge, gigantic, elephant sized issue with AGPL for me is
> > that it is _completely_ unclear to me what you actually have to
> > do to fulfill the license requirements of that "frankenmonster".
> >
> 
> Read the license, then.

Which tells me exactly NOTHING.
It says each piece is covered by ITS license.
I.e. there isn't ONE license that covers the whole
thing?!
Their nice compatibility matrix shows what applies for
other license combinations, but they left the AGPLv3
out of that one!
The license also never defines what exactly
"if you modify the Program" would mean
(so, if a company, for example Canonical, modified it and
never gave me the source or even told me it was modified,
is only the company in trouble or am I too? If I am,
that's a problem, if I am not that's a loophole almost
as big as the one it meant to fix).

> > No restrictions on use makes GPL very simple: if you don't
> > redistribute, you don't need to do anything.
> > What if you somehow got an OS image that happens to use
> > a FFmpeg compiled against AGPL components (without you being
> > aware, since you never use or care about the AGPL parts)
> > and then use FFmpeg to stream over the net (or even your proprietary
> > code), are you suddenly in violation of the license?
> >
> 
> What if you get a version of FFmeg compiled against GPLv3, without being
> aware that this is the case,
> and then combine it with a proprietary application ?  Same situation.

No, absolutely no problem. None at all. Completely fine.
Sure if you pass it on you have to check things (but also,
only if you distribute the FFmpeg compiled as GPLv3, not if
you simply distribute your binary, and also not if you
distribute e.g. within your organization).
And by accident distributing binary doesn't really happen,
whereas accidentally having a server service run or exposed
wider than expected happens all the time.

> If the answer is "yes", I am against such a version of FFmpeg
> > working without each _use_ of it requiring a special action
> > that confirms users are aware of the license obligations.
> >
> 
> The same logic applies to GPLv3 distributions of FFmpeg.

There is NO way that simply RUNNING a GPLv3 version of FFmpeg
EVER triggers ANY license obligation.