How does

"Distributing buildable source under Apache 2.0 would surely qualify too"

reconcile with

"doesn't own the copyright to FFMPEG and simply doesn't have the legal authority to release it under any license other than the LGPL"

"In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."

They should be covered as an aggregation, provided the LGPL was intact.

Could there have been other / better moves with sending a reminder.

I think the devs of that Chinese company seemed to immediately acknowledge the attribution.

Now the OSS community loses the OSS code of IloveRockchip, and FFmpeg wins practically nothing, except recognition on a single file (that devs from Rockchip actually publicly acknowledged, though in a clumsy way) but loses in reputation and loses a commercial fork (and potential partner).

Only if the code you copy pasted the LGPL part into is licenced under a compatible license, and Apache is not.

The simplest way to comply while keeping your incompatible license is to isolate the LGPL part into a dynamic library, there are other ways, but it is by far the most common.

copy/pasting, or using some other mechanism to do digital duplication is irrelevant - the removal of the existing license and essentially _re-license_ without authority is the problem, no matter what the mechanism of including the code is.

this is accurate and how i should have phrased it. i should not have mentioned dynamic linking; you're right it's not relevant

thank you!

this is accurate - thank you for the correction

They were given 1.5 YEARS of lead time. And FLOSS should treat commercial entities the same way they treat us.

Seriously, if we copied in violation their code, how many hours would pass before a DMCA violation?

FLOSS should be dictatorial in application of the license. After all, its basically free to use and remix as long as you follow the easy rules. I'm also on the same boat that Android phone creators should also be providing source fully, and should be confiscated on import for failure of copyright violations.

But ive seen FLOSS devs be like "let's be nice". Tit for tat is the best game theory so far. Time to use it.

If you own one of them, mix in LGPL code, and publish it, the result is entirely LGPL.

If you don’t own it and cannot legally relicense part as LGPL, you’re not allowed to publish it.

Just because you can merge someone else’s code does not mean you’re legally allowed to do so.

You determine if the licenses are compatible first. If they are, you're fine, as long as you fulfill the terms of both licenses.

If they aren't compatible, then you can't use them together, so you have to find something else, or build the functionality yourself.

Some licenses, like LGPL, have provisions for this, some just forbid it.

In the specific ffmpeg case, you are allowed to dynamically link against it from a project with an incompatible license.

You should keep them in different directories and have the appropriate license for each directory. You can have a top-level LICENSE file explaining the situation.

This depends on the licenses.

Copyleft licenses are designed to prevent you mixing code as the licenses are generally incompatible with mixing.

More permissive license will generally allow you to mix licenses. This is why you can ship permissive code in a proprietary code base.

As for linking, “weak copyleft” license allow you to link but not to “mix” code. This is essentially the point of the LGPL.

You dynamicly link against it

With the exception of the Apache license, most major licenses don't cover patents. I have no idea about proprietary licenses if that's what you're talking about here, but it's a bit unclear, so it might help to go into more details than "something something" if you're intending to make a compelling case.

Independent implementations of an algorithm are a different dimension from software licensing. So the “unclean hands” argument doesn’t hold water here.

Patents != copyright

What licenses are they violating?

> I hate doing the whole whataboutism thing [...], but...

... yet, you did it anyway, without going into detail or providing any clue where these violations (as you claim) are.

If there's any substance to what you say, provide some details and proof, so it can be a constructive discussion, rather than just noise.

The DMCA notice is available here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2025/12/2025-12-1...

The notice has a list of files and says that they were copied from ffmpeg, removed the original copyright notice, added their own and licensed under the more permissive Apache license.

Yes it's not loading on the archive but I was following the thread closely, it was said recently within the last few months which prompted further discussion and this action by ffmpeg.

100% my assumptions but:

They were never really working on it, they thought it would just go away. Maybe some junior/senior dev took a shot at it, gave a project plan and it went nowhere.

I cannot imagine it somehow impacts parents.

Copyright and patents are completely independent concepts.

The “perpetual” part is the issue but “rent seeking” is the entire reason that copyright and patents exist to begin with.

I mostly agree with you, but if a human straight up copies work under copyright they’re violating the law. Seems like a LLM should be held to the same standard unless they should be even less beholden to the law than people.

It’s also incredibly hard to tell if a LLM copied something since you can’t ask it in court and it probably can’t even tell you if it did.

Not true. That's philosophical skepticism and was roundly refuted long ago.

I think it's probably less frequent nowadays, but it very much does happen. This still-active lawsuit[0] was made in response to LLMs generating verbatim chunks of code that they were trained on.[1]

[0] https://githubcopilotlitigation.com [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/8/23446821/microsoft-openai...

You can still very trivially get entire chunks of code from Copilot including even literal author names (simply by prodding with a doxygen tag).

ChatGPT has given me code with comments so specific I found the original 6 year old github.

They do, and, early on, Microsoft (and perhaps others) put in some checks to try to hide that.

Surely they do sometimes?

> Dynamic linking is a condition for LGPL compliance

No, it isn’t. The condition says to allow your users to make and use their own modifications to the part of the software which falls under the LGPL. Dynamic linking is only a convenient way of allowing this, not a requirement.

Incompetence is a taboo. It shouldn't be.

I think it should be perfectly OK to make value judgements of other people, and if they are backed by evidence, make them publicly and make them have consequences for that person's position.

You can see it everywhere. In this case, the fact that it took 2 years. And of course now that FFmpeg is getting more exposure in the media due to their association with AI hype, now they finally get 'fair' legal treatment... I don't call that winning. I see this over and over. Same thing all over the west.

I remember Rowan Atkinson (the UK actor) made a speech about this effect a couple of years ago and never heard about it since but definitely feeling it more and more... No exposure, no money, no legal representation. And at the same time we are being gaslit about our privilege.

Since the link to the actual code is DMCA’d in Rockchip’s repository, anyone have a fork so we can form an opinion independently?

No, they have that. It's just not universally applied, or rather with 'some flexibility' instead :-)

It remains to be seen how much 'pull' FFmpeg has against the 'push' of Rockchip.

Xlssid

Is working around accessing an embargoed site really any better than just accessing it directly? Morally, what's the difference?

If everyone just actively boycotted that site, it would become irrelevant overnight. Anything else is simply condoning it continued existence. Don't kid yourself.

I'd like to learn but I can't find a guide on how to do it. Could you please share one?

[flagged]

I think both of you are right. But OP may think of the larger picture. A bit like 'move fast and break things', that sort of things where you blur the lines when it's valuable enough. Not that I agree with this ethical stance, but surely there's some sclerotic aspect of being too stiff on rules. It's a weird balance.

> if I spend a few years writing some code, you should get to copy it for your own interests

If you publish the code, there's an argument to be made that yes, others should freely use it: if you could (or did) monetize the code yourself you wouldn't publish it. If you didn't, or failed trying to monetize it, maybe it's better for society if everyone else also gets to try?

> Software licensing is just another form of property rights

That's a pretty substantial assertion and without much to back it up.

The framing of copyright as basically the same as ownership of chattel or land is a propaganda campaign.

I guess who cares about civility if you're the last man standing.

Also - that word: civility. We're animals driven by self-interest. What should civility even mean here

> I've always found it beyond ridiculous. Either you post your code in public and you accept it'll be used by others, without any enforceable restriction, or you don't. It's as simple as that.

If we can have this, but for everything, so films, books, TV, music and everything else, I'd agree. This however is not the world we live in. The amount of culture we could have from people remixing the past 50 years worth of culture would be incredible. Instead, we're stuck with the same stuff we were over 70 years ago.

The amount of progress we could make in software is probably on a similar level, but the problem is the same as it is with the cultural artefacts. So instead we're stuck in a world where money makes right, since you need money to uphold the laws intended to protect Intellectual Property™. I can't blame ffmpeg for working within the rules of the system, even if the system sucks.

And that doesn't mean it's not 100% bullshit. Also, nation states have 10-20 year plans... yet your mental horizon spans a few days at most.

> I mean, torrenting is decentralised and not technically takedownable.

It's fairly trivial to block torrent traffic.

Github stores about 19 PB. That would cost about $20k a year on Filecoin. Filecoin currently has more supply than demand because it's speculation-driven right now.

There wouldn't be an org maintaining it. You would just buy $100 worth of GitCoin and that would be enough for 10000 commits, or something like that.

Ooh, how about instead of being able to author a commit message, you're forced to let an LLM write it for you based on the diff since last commit. And that the LLM runs distributed on the blockchain, so it's monstrously slow, and has to be paid for with a 'gas' analogue so there's huge transaction fees as well.

That's the most techbro-brained idea I could come up with.