[whatwg] Google's use of FFmpeg in Chromium and Chrome

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> I also understand that the LGPL doesn't explicitly "require [anyone]
> to pass along patent rights we may have obtained elsewhere". However,
> it seems quite clear that the intention of #11 is to say that you
> cannot redistribute the code unless you do exactly that.
>
> What am I missing?

At this point, I am just as confused as Hakom.

I am curious if someone has contacted the FSF for the interpretation  
of the LGPL in this particular case.

It would make a lot of people's life easier if they could license  
patents from MPEG-LA and redistribute ffmpeg.

We are on a similar situation with Moonlight where we ended up  
distributing proprietary codecs for VC1 (also MPEG-LA licensed)  
instead of the open source ffmpeg.

Today our answer for those that want to use ffmpeg (and it is my  
personal choice as well, since I rather dogfood open source software)   
is to compile Moonlight from source code and use the ffmpeg code  
themselves instead of depending on proprietary codecs to be installed.

Miguel.