[FFmpeg-devel] [DECISION] Project policy on closed source components

[James Almer]

On 5/13/2019 5:23 PM, Carl Eugen Hoyos wrote:
> Am Mo., 13. Mai 2019 um 22:18 Uhr schrieb James Almer <jamrial at gmail.com>:
>>
>> On 5/13/2019 5:13 PM, Carl Eugen Hoyos wrote:
>>> Am Mo., 13. Mai 2019 um 22:10 Uhr schrieb Marton Balint <cus at passwd.hu>:
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, 28 Apr 2019, Marton Balint wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>
>>>>> There has been discussion on the mailing list several times about the
>>>>> inclusion of support for closed source components (codecs, formats,
>>>>> filters, etc) in the main ffmpeg codebase.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also the removal of libNDI happened without general consensus, so a vote
>>>>> is necessary to justify the removal.
>>>>>
>>>>> So here is a call to the voting committee [1] to decide on the following
>>>>> two questions:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) Should libNDI support be removed from the ffmpeg codebase?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the votes, I counted 9 yes, 5 no, so majority is for removal of
>>>> libNDI, which is already done.
>>>
>>> The vote was not about the removal from libndi from release branches?
>>
>> No, features on releases are frozen, as changing them can result in
>> breakages for distros and package managers.
> 
> We have broken distros and packages before, we would not break it
> in this case;-)

We would. Distros and scripts would be broken, and it would not be pretty.

> 
>> We have removed tons of
>> libraries before and it's always limited to git master.
> 
> None of them had to be removed because the authors chose to
> violate our copyright (and refused to fix the copyright violation)
> so we decided to stop endorsing them.

If you feel strong about it, and if you think it justifies breaking
releases and pissing off distros and package managers handling half a
decade old well tested LTS releases, you can start a vote to remove it
from releases.
Seeing the outcome of the above vote, i wouldn't be surprised if such a
vote gets a positive result as well.

> 
>> The vote was to make the removal official
> 
> Sorry, but I find this interpretation extremely difficult from the quote above,

I think "Also the removal of libNDI happened without general consensus,
so a vote is necessary to justify the removal." is pretty clear with its
usage of words like "happened".