[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Cherry picks vs merges

[Marton Balint]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2025, James Almer wrote:

> On 6/1/2025 4:23 PM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>>  Hi James
>>
>>  On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 02:27:37PM -0300, James Almer wrote:
>>>  On 6/1/2025 12:22 PM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>>>>  Hi all
>>>>
>>>>  almpeg is now merged upto 1 months ago. (and since last merge it
>>>>  contains
>>>>  bits of AGPL code)
>>>>
>>>>  The question now is, how does the community want to proceed from here?
>>>  Full stop.
>>>
>>
>>>  Not only you're trying to bypass explicit a license notice on
>>>  technicalities,
>>
>>  This is a serious accusation.
>>
>>  Code is either under the LGPL license or it is not.
>>  It cannot be sometimes under the LGPL license, the license headers
>>  on the files in question, distrinbuted by Paul are unmodified
>>  LGPL headers. There is no extra notice or anything in these headers.
>>
>>  If paul wants them to be GPL he can change these headers at any time.
>>
>>  And the "explicit license notice" you refer to is this:
>>
>>  "All Librempeg modifications, and any new files not available in FFmpeg,
>>  are licensed under GPL v2,
>>    unless stated otherwise."
>>
>>  And it IS stated otherwise in these files by the license header in these
>>  files.
>
> This is the technicality i was talking about. The fact he copy-pasted a 
> boilerplate LGPL header in all new files being used as a way to invoke the 
> "unless stated otherwise" part of the notice.
>
> I'm not against merging his changes, and i apologize if what i said before 
> sounded like an accusation, but the way i want this to go forward is with him 
> being ok with it, and not us trying to find a way to workaround what was 
> seemingly his intention to license his changes a certain way.

+1. Yeah, Paul changing the license was not nice, but ffmpeg as a project 
merging his work against his will would not be nice either, even if it 
might be legally OK, it certainly would not be OK morally.

Regards,
Marton