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

[Leo Sutic]

No probs, dude.

Regarding the 2.56 version - right now we have a libavcodec dll binary
checked into SVN - there is no source code in the blender tree:

    https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/windows/ffmpeg/lib/

(We have ffmpeg binaries for other platforms checked in as well)

I think it would be trivial to get a source package checked in there
as well. The corresponding source tarball is here:

    http://ffmpeg.arrozcru.org/autobuilds/ffmpeg/sources/ffmpeg-r22941-swscale-r31050.tar.bz2

I don't have commit access, so I'm leaving this to someone who does now.

Anyone?

/LS

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 2:38 AM, Carl Eugen Hoyos <ce at hoyos.ws> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Sorry for the noise!
>
> Your analysis is absolutely correct, given that I am the one hunting real
> FFmpeg license violators, I should really know better! libavcodec.dll
> shipped with Blender 2.49b was NOT linked against libfaac, there is
> absolutely nothing wrong with the dll (license-wise, since it is quite old,
> I fear there are a few known bugs in it)!
>
> Note that there may be another problem,
> http://download.blender.org/release//Blender2.56abeta/blender-2.56a-beta-windows32.zip
> contains libavcodec, but the source package
> http://download.blender.org/source/blender-2.56-beta.tar.gz may be missing
> FFmpeg sources (probably because you removed FFmpeg from your source tree,
> iiuc),
> Am I right or am I again missing something?
>
> Thank you for reacting so quickly (I wish the real license violators would
> be so fast!), and please excuse me again for making wrong assumptions!
>
> Carl Eugen
>
> PS: The reason I went to your forum today (and believed I saw the wrong
> information there that Blender uses libfaac) is this bug report that claims
> a problem using libavcodec:
> http://roundup.ffmpeg.org/issue2485
> If anybody knows which "posts in the blender's bugtracker" user chaos means,
> I can try to help (although I am very bad in using libavcodec outside of
> FFmpeg/MPlayer). I didn't find anything remotely similar, but perhaps you
> know what he is talking about.
>
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Leo Sutic wrote:
>
>> 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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>>
>