Bug#658084: libav-extra: Really necessary?

[Fabian Greffrath]

Package: libav-extra
Severity: wishlist

Dear Reinhard et at,

I'd like to start a discussion about this package by means of this bug report.
Honestly, I do not see the purpose of this package and while I appreciate the
work Reinhard has done with it, am not sure where it will bring us.

First, as pointed out in 653451, this package offers merely two additional
codecs compared to the regular libav packages. One is a (redundant?) AAC
encoder and the other one is an AMR-WB encoder. Quite exotic if you are asking
me. I'd say, if you really need these codecs, rebuild the libav package - it's
all in the archive.

Second, the reason why these codecs are not enabled in the standard libav
package is AFAIUI their licensing, which would require the GPL-v3 to apply for
the whole of the libav libraries - in contrast to GPL-v2+ without these codecs.
This might lead to some legal problems when linking with software licensed
under GPL-v3-incompatible terms (right?).

However, I think what we are doing with libav-extra is a bit insincere. We
pretend to play fair by only building packages against the GPL-v2+ libav
libraries but then offer the possibly license-incompatible GPL-v3 libraries
from the libav-extra packages for runtime linking.

TL;DR I think we should either enable the additional codecs in the regular
libav package, accept the license bump and analyze the license problems that
might occur with other packages. Or we should accept the fact that there are
potential license problems and disable these two offending codecs altogether.
The current solution with two libav* packages is not a stright line IMHO.

Cheers,
Fabian



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