[Libav-user] Building with purchased libraries

[Phil Turmel]

On 12/09/2015 02:47 AM, Yury Udovichenko wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Our company is in process of purchasing binary version of x264 library
> from the legal representative of the library owner. This means we are
> not required to open the sources of our application.
> 
> In addition we would like to use ffmpeg as part of the project but to
> use x264 library, we have to use "--enable-gpl" flag.
> This makes the project eligible for opening all sources under GPL.
> 
> Our question is how do we build ffmpeg in a way not to be eligible for
> GPL? E.g. can we fix the build system not to use --enable-gpl parameter
> and release ffmpeg part under LGPL?

You quite probably cannot.

The code in ffmpeg that utilizes the x264 library is under the GPL, it
appears.  Buying a commercial license to x264 doesn't give you any
rights to code in other projects.

The only certain path is to write your own application with the
functionality you need, possibly paired with LGPL ffmpeg libraries.

But I am not a lawyer.  You probably need one.

Phil