Copy pasting code is allowed under LGPL, but doing so while removing license headers and attribution of code snippets would not be.

they waited for more than 1.5 years and they did not forgot

LGPL does not mandate dynamic linking, it mandates the ability to re-assemble a new version of the library. This might mean distributing object files in the case of a statically-linked application, but it is still allowed by the license.

That's not it. The LGPL doesn't require dynamic linking, just that any distributed artifacts be able to be used with derived versions of the LGPL code. Distributing buildable source under Apache 2.0 would surely qualify too.

The problem here isn't a technical violation of the LGPL, it's that Rockchip 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. What they should have done is put their modified FFMPEG code into a forked project, clearly label it with an LGPL LICENSE file, and link against that.

What happens when you want to mix two libraries with different licences?

Incorporating compatible code, under different license is perfectly OK and each work can have different license, while the whole combined work is under the terms of another.

I'm honestly quite confused what FFmpeg is objecting to here, if ILoveRockchip wrote code, under a compatible license (which Apache 2.0 is wrt. LGPLv2+ which FFmpeg is licensed under) -- then that seems perfectly fine.

The repository in question is of course gone. Is it that ILoveRockchip claims that they wrote code that was written FFmpeg? That is bad, and unrelated to any license terms, or license compatibility ... just outright plagiarism.

Best case scenario is it nukes the whole concept of software patents and the whole ugly industry of copyright hoarding. The idea that perpetual rent-seeking is a natural extension and intended outcome of the legal concepts of copyrights and patents is bizarre.

Llm's do not verbatim disgorge chunks of the code they were trained on.

Everything humans make up also comes from source material.

The real (legal) question in either case, is how much is actually copied, and how obvious is it.

Everything is a derivative work.

Maybe I’m not smart enough to grasp all these flowery words, but is this suggesting if I spend a few years writing some code, you should get to copy it for your own interests and without compensating me as long as your sales and marketing is better than mine?

I don’t think Rockchip learned from the ffmoeg code. They simply copied it outright without attribution.

> The LGPL is a product of a very specific moment: European legalism meeting American corporate compromise

If I tend to agree with the general message of the post, this specific point does not make any sense.

The LGPL and the GPL are 100% American products. They are originally issued from the the American Academic world with the explicit goal of twisting the arm of the (American) copyright system for ideological reasons.

That has zero relation to any European legalism.

re-framing this as a PRC vs West thing seems forced and weird

So progress is always good, no matter how many people's work you exploit without their consent? You have a nice car, can I just take it and use it myself? Why is code any different? Is slavery OK too?

A much more interesting problem is how to create prosperity without throwing people under the bus - with everybody who contributed profiting proportionally to their contribution.

Why does China vigorously prosecute Chinese nationals when they pirate Chinese software?

Except of course for that one little detail where Chinese companies take out minor improvement patents to kick the door shut on open source projects that they build on top of.

> There's a pattern here that's bigger than FFmpeg

Why are you turning this into a discussion about China?

Its not about china.

Its about stealing.

Its not a complex, or western concept.

Software licensing is just another form of property rights, and property rights is what society uses to incentivise civility.

ChatGPT write this bro?

This perfectly summarizes my feeling about software licenses.

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.

The rest is self-importance from bitter old men.

Awesome comment. Thank you.

> Declining civilizations obsess over rules. Rising ones obsess over outcomes.

Heard that in a very different context. Care to mention what you are referring to? How do you know?

The one you reference doesn't look like it misrepresents the licenses, i.e. of you use it to make your own derivative you would expect to have to share modifications you make to the LGPL code.

I recently had to deal with a ministry in Canada, where a worker who had been there since 20 years ago failed even a basic test of competence in reading comprehension. Then multiple issues with the OPC (Office of Privacy Commissioner) failing entirely on a basic issue.

Another example exists in Ontario's tenant laws constantly being criticized as enabling bad tenant behavior, but reading the statute full of many month delays for landlords and 2 day notices for tenants paints a more realistic picture.

In fact, one such landlord lied, admitted to lying, and then had their lie influence the decision in their favor, despite it being known to be false, by their own word. The appeal mentioned discretion of the adjudicator.

Not sure how long that can go on before a collapse, but I can't imagine it's very long.

So here we have the good guys using the law and ... at least temporarily ... winning... so what's your point?

Does this work for you? https://xcancel.com/FFmpeg/status/2004599109559496984

What's stopping you from making the archive link yourself?

https://xcancel.com/FFmpeg/status/2004599109559496984

https://www.ffmpeg.org/donations.html

What's the clash? Is the claim that China lacks the notion of copyright, or that they don't care about the rule of law?

Not a fan of the CCP, but GH in general has a big problem with users not understanding and respecting licensing and passing off others' code as their own, sometimems unintentionally, often not.

Git already has a blockchain; what you will need to do next is to make copies of the objects of the repositories on other servers as well. (However, I don't know if the blockchain includes tags on git (it seems to me that it might not but I don't know enough about it), although it does include objects. Fossil includes tags in the blockchain as well as files, commits, etc.)

I mean, torrenting is decentralised and not technically takedownable. But it was entirely possible to make it legally painful for people involved in it, as seen in eg. The Pirate Bay, megaupload or an entire cease-and-desist letter industry around individual torrenting users

Intentional noncompliance with copyright law can get you quite a distance, but there's a lot of money involved, so if you ever catch the wrong kind of attention, usually by being too successful, you tend to get smacked.

The cost would be incredible even for just a pointer to distributed file storage

Yes, using blockchain to defraud the GPL.

Checks out sufficiently dystopian, yep.

If you could work some gratuitous LLM in there, we could be a little closer to torment-nexus territory. Keep working at it.

git already uses a blockchain lol