[Bf-committers] Any legal issues w/ including ffmpeg in my distribution?

Ton Roosendaal ton at blender.org
Mon Mar 24 13:49:02 CET 2014


Hi,

This is very confusing information. 

First: talk to Audacity if you want to know their reasoning to not include (parts of) FFMpeg, then decide then your own stance.

Second: Blender Foundation sees no problem distributing FFMpeg with Blender as we do now. If we get reports or evidence we're violating the law, I'll investigate that.

Third: such legal investigations and discussions then will happen in private. No reason to feed the (patent) trolls more.

Fourth: if you develop and distribute code under GPL (which you have to, it uses Blender), you can get legal advice from FSF and softwarefreedom.org.

-Ton-

--------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands



On 24 Mar, 2014, at 4:42, Garrett Williams wrote:

> I'm working on a custom version of Blender and intend to distribute
> it. Since Audacity can't include ffmpeg due to software patents, this
> gives me concern about including ffmpeg with my distribution of
> Blender. Playing videos is crucial for my purposes, especially in the
> game engine. Likewise, exporting videos is potentially crucial.
> Does Blender do something special with ffmpeg to prevent patent
> issues, besides the foundation being based in Europe? I live in the
> United States, which makes me very wary of software patents. I'm
> probably even over-concerned about making a feature that looks
> anything like what somebody might have a patent on. Not sure if just
> hosting the site in Europe would provide any legal protection.
> I should add that my distribution is designed to compete with
> Powerpoint, so I wouldn't want any easy targets for their legal
> department if Blendshow(my distribution) becomes successful. I think
> LibreOffice Impress implements ffmpeg in a similar way, so maybe I'm
> just looking too deep into Audacity's reasoning for not including it.
> 
> Pre-emptive acknowledgement of disclaimers: I understand that most
> likely none of you are lawyers and I should pay a lawyer more than I
> have if I expect a reliable answer.
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