[Bug 2736] Review Request: fdk-aac - Fraunhofer FDK AAC Codec Library

[Ian Malone]

On 13 January 2016 at 19:01, RPM Fusion Bugzilla <noreply at rpmfusion.org> wrote:
> https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2736
>
> --- Comment #22 from Eric Work <work.eric at gmail.com> 2016-01-13 20:01:52 CET ---
> (In reply to comment #19)
>> And This is totally illegal as stated by FFmpeg, this is a violation of their
>> GPL rights, Please read: "December 5th, 2015, The native FFmpeg AAC encoder is
>> now stable!" on ffmpeg.org
>> It will be better to the the full featured native ffmpeg aac encoder
>> implementation.
>>
>> As a project, we cannot endorse such violation of the GPL.
>
> I'm not sure I understand what is illegal about Negativo distributing an
> fdk-aac package and an ffmpeg package that links to the fdk-aac libraries
> dynamically.  If you statically linked to a non-distributable library then
> you'd have problems.  It's true that there could be some patent issues in
> certain countries and fdk-aac is not GPL, but this is also why you need to pass
> --non-free to configure to enable it.  I think this is why it's discouraged.
> This is more an aside and regardless this is definitely in the nonfree section.
>

This is the relevant clarification for anyone willing to investigate it:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLAndPlugins

Also, just dynamic linking (as opposed to plugins) is no different to
static linking within the GPL license terms. The situation is
different for LGPL, but a project such as ffmpeg, which is principally
a libraries effort, have probably given some thought to the difference
between the two.

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk