Sorry, but this is about relicensing, not about linking

Sorry, but this is about relicensing, not about linking

Posted Jun 25, 2009 21:21 UTC (Thu) by gdamjan (guest, #33634)
In reply to: Sorry, but this is about relicensing, not about linking by khim
Parent article: The LGPL and video codecs

Sorry, but no. The text I refer to specifically talks around relicensing: As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications.

WTF?? The LGPL doesn't talk about relicensing at all.. and even the text you quote doesn't mention relicensing.

When you distribute a software you got to use under LGPL, it stays LGPL. It's allowed to be linked to non-LGPL software, yes. But still Google DOES distribute ffmpeg, and they distribute it under the LGPL.

So, Google does distribute FFmpeg under LGPL, FFmpeg contains code that might be covered by MPEG-LA patents. The only way for Google to do that is:

• either, infridge patents of MPEG-LA
• license patents for distributing FFmpeg (but then the FFmpeg license has some requirements about that).

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