Bug#552705: ITP: mp4v2 -- a library that provides functions to read, eate, and modify mp4 files

[Yavor Doganov]

Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> I think, however, that its license (MPL) makes the package mostly 
> useless for linking against all GPL'ed software - which is, well, 
> quite a lot.

I agree completely.

Actually, melodie.app is under a non-copyleft license but of course
Debian will distribute it under GPL, since our ffmpeg libs are under
GPL.  When I mentioned this to upsteeam (that we can't link against
libavcodec/libavformat and mp4v2 even if/when the latter is packaged
in Debian) they said that it's a distro's problem if the distro ships
"GPL-contaminated" (sic) ffmpeg.

FWIW, they just use mp4v2's tags functionality (which was implemented
in taglib) and intend to drop the dependency when a new taglib release
is made (which I think is already a fact).

I humbly suggest to keep mp4v2 on hold and avoid uploading it until
there is actually any benefit -- libraries with no reverse
dependencies are mostly useless.

P.S.  When I was investigating this issue (i.e. why mp4v2 is not in
      Debian) about 2 years ago I vaguely remember an old ITP and a
      discussion that it cannot be in Debian due to patents concerns.
      Upstream's homepage at SF (back then) was pretty scary, too.
      Sorry I can't give any references right now.