Bug#654984: libav: Please use a less confusing package name

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans <at> at.or.at> writes:

> >> I'm not really convinced by 'avtools' and 'avutils', as both seem
> >> pretty generic to me. 'libav' was chosen to follow the name change of
> >> the project 'ffmpeg'->'libav'.
> > 
> > To clarify:
> > There was no name change, the FFmpeg project is active with no name change
> > at http://ffmpeg.org
> > libav is just one of several FFmpeg forks, all forks share several security
> > issues and many known bugs and regressions not present in FFmpeg, see the
> > FFmpeg bug tracker for details
> 
> How about we keep this fight out of Debian? 

> It seems clear that the place for libav bug reports would be the libav bug
> tracker.

You are completely right, some issues that were fixed in FFmpeg (but are still
reproducible with avconv) are listed on the forks' bugtracker, but many more
issues are listed as fixed tickets on FFmpeg trac, that is why I recommend it as
a resource.

> It also seems clear libav is an ffmpeg fork, and ffmpeg is also alive as a
> project.

This is exactly what I was trying to clarify, I don't think this was clear in
the original mail above, sorry if you feel my mail wasn't clear either.

> Its certainly not the first time such a thing has happened in the world of
> free software.

I don't claim that's not true, but I do not know of an example.

> I think there should also be room for someone to package ffmpeg for Debian if
> they wanted to since it provides different things than libav.

That would be great, Michael has suggested this several times since the fork
happened, it was even discussed on this list. The FFmpeg developers would
certainly strongly support that.

> I see no reason for Debian policy to dictate that ffmpeg not be allowed in
> Debian, please illuminate me if you believe otherwise.  I do fear that useful
> software (ffmpeg in this case) will be prevented from inclusion in Debian.

+1

Carl Eugen