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I was under the impression that FFmpeg can be used commercially, just so long as the source for FFmpeg itself (if modified) is available and the lgpl license is

I was under the impression that FFmpeg can be used commercially, just so long as the source for FFmpeg itself (if modified) is available and the lgpl license is distributed with it. I could be wrong but FFmpeg is used with MediaCoder as an option, and a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app.

CinematicStudio 6y ago
anotheryou also pointed me to: https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ffmpeg-in-a-commercial-product https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ff... I remember looking into this a while ago in quite a bit of detail: https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you.html https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p... (there's plenty of other links to this). Long story short, MPEG LA owns some patents that relate to h264/h265, and you need to pay them A LOT of $ in order to use these codecs. Using ffmpeg will not devoid you of that. Also, even somewhere on the ffmpeg page, when I last read it, it will say something more in the lines of "we're not lawyers, so take this with a grain of salt". > a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app. As far as I know unless they are actually free, they could end up being sued by MPEG LA. I remember at some point that's what I wanted to do - just download and use ffmpeg as an exe. But if I read stuff correctly, I do think I'm not allowed to do that - in other words you (as an application) are allowed to open a web browser to the link, but it's the user who needs to do the actual download and install. ---------- So all in all, after doing quite a bit of research, seeing how vague the licensing from MPEGLA is and all that, I started looking for alternatives. I found one (from Microsoft), and that's what I'm using. At this point, it satisfies most of my needs (even though I had to do lot of optimizations on top of it) -- in case this won't hold true in the future, I may revisit the whole ffmpeg mambo-jambo :D

CinematicStudio 6y ago

anotheryou also pointed me to: https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ffmpeg-in-a-commercial-product https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ff... I remember looking into this a while ago in quite a bit of detail: https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you.html https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p... (there's plenty of other links to this). Long story short, MPEG LA owns some patents that relate to h264/h265, and you need to pay them A LOT of $ in order to use these codecs. Using ffmpeg will not devoid you of that. Also, even somewhere on the ffmpeg page, when I last read it, it will say something more in the lines of "we're not lawyers, so take this with a grain of salt". > a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app. As far as I know unless they are actually free, they could end up being sued by MPEG LA. I remember at some point that's what I wanted to do - just download and use ffmpeg as an exe. But if I read stuff correctly, I do think I'm not allowed to do that - in other words you (as an application) are allowed to open a web browser to the link, but it's the user who needs to do the actual download and install. ---------- So all in all, after doing quite a bit of research, seeing how vague the licensing from MPEGLA is and all that, I started looking for alternatives. I found one (from Microsoft), and that's what I'm using. At this point, it satisfies most of my needs (even though I had to do lot of optimizations on top of it) -- in case this won't hold true in the future, I may revisit the whole ffmpeg mambo-jambo :D