On Mon, 2013-01-14 at 12:02 +0100, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
On 13/01/13 10:13, Dan MacDonald wrote:
In all three of these examples it wasn't the
fault of the Debian
maintainers that these alternate versions get used, it was the authors
of the software switching from Free a software license such as the GPL
to one that the Debian social contract no longer considers free or
trying to enforce copyright on corporate logos or whatever.
AFAIK, ffmpeg is
(L)GPL, depending on presence or not of certain
encoders/decoders:
"FFmpeg is free software licensed under the LGPL or GPL depending on
your choice of configuration options. If you use FFmpeg or its
constituent libraries, you must adhere to the terms of the license in
question. You can find basic compliance information and get licensing
help on our license and legal considerations page." [1]
I don't *think* ffmpeg got deprecated in favour of libav on Debian for
license issues. The author of the "The FFmpeg/Libav situation" posted by
the OP seems to suggest the decision was simply based on personal
preference to Libav by tht maintainer.
As a consequence my ffmpeg (+ jack) screen recording script (and jack
screen recording in general) is now broken for since months [2] :)
I for one am glad that Debian has some standards here and is willing
to maintain them. If you happen not to like it and you are pro
copyrights and non-free software then you are free to use Ubuntu, Red
Hat or another distro that is more open to non-free or coryright software.
Debian
also has 'non-free'...
BTW, if you are pro-GPL you *are* pro-copyright. Just read the GPL
carefully and you'll see what I mean [3]
Also notice the absence of Debian from the "Free GNU/Linux
distributions" [4] on the
gnu.org website.
Lorenzo.
[1]
http://ffmpeg.org/index.html
[2]
http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lau/2012/11/17/194326
[3]
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
[4]
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
Debian isn't GNU/Linux any more, it only does provide GNU/Linux and for
sure it's the most important port, but there's also a FreeBSD port.
http://www.debian.org/ports/
Has anybody tested Debian BSD? I'm playing with FreeBSD (not Debian's
FreeBSD) at the moment. I don't think it's ready for serious audio work,
but I might be mistaken, since I still set up FreeBSD, when ever I've
got the time to "play", so I'm not in a hurry with compiling everything
that's needed. FWIW, FreeBSD also does provide packages, but at the
moment there aren't packages for all releases.
However, Suse even deals with Bill Beelzebub and Debian instead takes
care about another *NIX, so we can choose what we do need.
Regards,
Ralf