> Their legal page even suggests (or should I say, demands) additional provisions above and beyond what the LGPL asks for (i.e. The requirements of the LGPL are modest (frankly they require you to grant end users just about the minimum rights that users should always get for any library that was used in a program, IMO), and the license is well known and well understood. The license is not draconian in the usual sense of the word. > Their license is DRACONIAN, and they are nasty about enforcing it. This kind of treatment seems pretty tight-wad, wouldn't you say so? I might add that the MC developer submitted patches with contributions to ffmpeg, all of which were refused without cause by the ffmpeg team. Meanwhile, the ffmpeg authors bull-headedly refused to mention to the MC developer what term he was violating, and other ffmpeg mailing list users were equally as puzzled as the MC developer. "If distribution of object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place satisfies the requirement to distribute the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code."
LGPL v3 even relaxes that particular clause at issue by adding: In MediaCoder's case, the nastiness ensued because the author didn't distribute the source code with the ffmpeg binaries that he included with his software. That's surprising to me because it's entirely possible to commercialize ffmpeg derivatives using LGPL while still complying with that license. I mean, it's well within their rights to impose whatever license they want on their software, but you shouldn't think that using ffmpeg in any closed source or commercial software is a good idea.ĮDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that none of this comes from personal experience. LGPL means no static linking, so using ffmpeg in your closed source Android/iOS apps is already completely ruled out of the picture. They even once had a Hall of Shame where they publicly called out offenders:
If they catch you violating their LGPL license, they act very antagonistically to you - as in, they are completely unwilling to work with you by taking the hard line stance that the only way you can appease them and comply with their license is to release your source code.
"There are also a few items that are not really related to LGPL compliance but are good ideas anyway"): Their legal page even suggests (or should I say, demands) additional provisions above and beyond what the LGPL asks for (i.e. Their license is DRACONIAN, and they are nasty about enforcing it.
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