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

[Aaron Boxer]

On Apr 4, 2016 5:12 PM, "Reimar Döffinger" <Reimar.Doeffinger at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> 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).

Good question. There are legal grey zones for all licences. Doesn't mean we
have to stop using them

>
> > > 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.
> ________

I could  give you an OS image that has a version of FFmpeg that uses
proprietary codecs. If you run it without knowing and without paying
license, then you have a similar problem.  Should we then ban closed source
codecs from FFmpeg?

Cheers,
Aaron

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