Select provider of libav* libraries

[Andreas Cadhalpun]

Hi,

On 06.06.2015 02:01, Bálint Réczey wrote:
> GPL imposes no restrictions on _using_ software, but on distributing
> it without properly licensed source, i.e. distributing a binary
> compiled from GPLv3 source without also providing the source under
> GPLv3 is prohibited.
> Compiling hedgewars without libavcodec-extra creates a GPLv2 binary
> which is distributable.
> The user can install libavcodec-extra which would also work with
> hedgewars, but no one violated GPLv3 up to this point AFAIK.

On 06.06.2015 02:07, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> The keyword in this sentence is "using". I do NOT think we need to
> prevent users from doing stupid things, but we must ensure that Debian
> as a (re-)distributor does not violate any licenses. The dependencies
> are set up in a way that ensures that all packages build against the
> GPLv2+ variants, and nowhere on the buildds or on any other Debian
> machine we distribute a piece of software that would be in violation
> here. And that was the point of this exercise.

The problem is that Debian users must be allowed to redistribute it,
but as far as I understand it, it is not allowed to distribute e.g.
a live DVD with hedgewars and libavcodec-extra installed.
I also pointed this out in the previous discussion [1].

> Since the hassle makes more work for active ffmpeg maintainers and
> while I sponsored a few uploads I don't consider myself one I should
> not make the call, but it would be really nice to provide the AMR
> encoder as well in Debian and also keeping hedgewars in the archive.
> 
> Maybe there is a way of providing libavcodec-extra and having modern
> packaging scripts. Maybe patching the build could help, but I have not
> checked this idea.

The AMR encoder is anyway just a wrapper around libopencore/libvo.
Gstreamer also has similar wrappers and since they are plugins, the
license is less of a problem.
Thus anyone really wanting to encode AMR can use gstreamer.

Best regards,
Andreas


1: https://lists.debian.org/debian-multimedia/2014/11/msg00018.html