[MPlayer-dev-eng] MEncoder license inquiry

[Diego Biurrun]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 10:29:46AM +0800, yichun.huang at kodak.com wrote:
> 
> I'm the developer of MediaCoder (http://mediacoder.sf.net), an audio/video 
> transcoder software which uses MEncoder as video encoder. MediaCoder is 
> made up of a GUI application and a library. The library is the glue to put 
> together all of the decoders, encoders (including MEncoder, which is also 
> the most important one) and tools it supports and let them work together. 
> MediaCoder is distributed under GPL license. Recently I'm going to make a 
> branch of current MediaCoder source code tree to make a new library (still 
> open-source) for use in a commercial software (part of it will be 
> closed-source). I want to know if this action is permitted or is it 
> possible for me to be granted the right to do this?

It depends on whether you use MEncoder as a separate binary or not.  If
it is a separate binary, it might be OK as long as you fulfill your
obligations under the GPL, if it is more tightly coupled, it is not.

Diego