[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH]lavd: Remove libndi newtek

[Jan Ekström]

On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 10:29 PM Martin Vignali <martin.vignali at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This patch looks wrong to me.
>
> It's seems like removing features for personal opinion.
>
> Ticket 7589, mention an incorrect build redistribution.
>
> So, right way to fix this ticket, will be (for people interesting in this
> kind of thing)
> to indicate, what need to be done, in order to have a licence compliant
> build.
> And if building in LGPL, it's a solution for provide a right binary,
> doesn't really understand, what
> it's not better mention in this ticket.
>

Actually, I'm not 100% sure if a closed source blob is LGPL compatible
this way - although the other way a closed source blob can include an
LGPL component as long as they provide the sources and the means to
replace the LGPL component (aka either shared libraries, or object
files for static linking). I don't remember who exactly was it whom
planted this idea in my mind (unrelated to NDI completely for the
record), but it did pop up in some discussion. Hopefully that someone
can chime in once again if he notices this.

> And if some people have personal issue with this company, i doesn't think
> this mailing list and trac it's really the right place for discussing it.
>

I think rather than having an issue with the company, some people are
having an issue with how it seems to have dealt with people who have
attempted to implement their protocol in open source (legal threats
were mentioned). Whether that is true or not I do not know, but as far
as I last saw on the issue tracker's thread there seems to be an
attempt of making it look better than it is.

I remember looking at their site and seeing their solution being
marketed as a "standard", yet there was no specification and they
clearly were only interested in their blob. But knowing nothing much
else, it was mostly on the "meh" level and thus I did not enough
strength to put enough care into looking into it more (at the time of
the patches).

> I agree with Ali Kizil,
> And the answer of newtek looks not so bad for me.
> The problem is maybe a licence violation (don't know and don't care),
> but it's very far away of selling a software with licence violation in it.
>
> This kind of agressive patch, send a very strange signal to current and
> future contributors/users.
>

Yes, I agree. We should have a more clear policy on non-OSS
contributions. Although to be completely honest the whole FFmpeg
development process is a mess. But I think we should keep this
discussion to NDI.

> FFmpeg keep some options for compatibility in long term, but can remove a
> future useful for some people so fast (just because some people would like
> to send a sanction/message) ?

If you think NDI is useful, I dearly hope you agree that it would be
more useful to you compatible with OSS licenses. Or even more so if it
was open source.

Jan