[Bf-committers] Fwd: Copyright violation distributing faac binaries together with GPL software

[Leo Sutic]

Carl and everyone else,

I've done some checking of the FFmpeg integration in Blender 2.49b.

I came up with the following:

I can confirm that the default configuration for compiling FFmpeg into
Blender has --enable-gpl set and no --enable-nonfree. So it *ought* to
be all right.

It is linked against libfaad, but I find no trace of libfaac in the dll.
For example, the string "faac: codec init failed" is in the dll, but
that's from libfaad (libfaad.c), which does not link to libfaac, as far
as I know. In libfaac.c, the FFmpeg interface to libfaac, are the
strings "wrong libfaac version" and  "libfaac AAC (Advanced Audio
Codec)", neither of which can be found in avcodec-52.dll. Unless these
strings are stored somewhere else, shouldn't they be present if
libfaac.o is linked in?

I am really unfamiliar with the FFmpeg codebase, so I don't know what
the significance of the above is. Carl, could you give me some guidance
as to what to look for to confirm the existence / absence of libfaac
code in the dll? Basically, what did you see?

/LS

On 2011-01-06 17:41, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi devs,
> 
> Please advise. I recall libavcodec is quite old already, and probably  
> obsolete mostly because of FFmpg?
> 
> -Ton-
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Carl Eugen Hoyos
>> Date: 6 January, 2011 17:15:37 GMT+01:00
>> To: foundation at blender.org
>> Subject: Copyright violation distributing faac binaries together  
>> with GPL software
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I am an FFmpeg developer and I just found out that Blender binaries  
>> are distributed containing GPL'd versions of libavcodec linked  
>> against non-free software (this is a copyright violation).
>>
>> I don't know where to report this (should I open a bug report?), so  
>> I write to the only email adress I easily found on the web-site.
>>
>> I downloaded blender-2.49b-windows, it contains libavcodec.dll, a  
>> binary distribution of libavcodec. The dll contains code from x264,  
>> making it GPL (and not LGPL). It also contains code from the libfaac  
>> project.
>> Originally, libfaac claimed to be free software (under the LGPL),  
>> but unfortunately, this was never true: libfaac is (and always has  
>> been) proprietary software.
>> Since you cannot fulfill the requirements of the GPL for libfaac,  
>> you cannot distribute a GPL'd version of libavcodec with libfaac  
>> support enabled. Please remove it from your download page / update  
>> your libavcodec version.
>>
>> Thank you, Carl Eugen Hoyos
> 
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