Re: [FFmpeg-devel] What is FFmpeg and what should it be

From: Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
To: FFmpeg development discussions and patches <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org>
Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] What is FFmpeg and what should it be
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2023 17:40:26 +0200
Message-ID: <20230803154026.GM7802@pb2> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <01010189b6eddf2f-ee020578-0e20-47af-92e4-385c73569d72-000000@us-west-2.amazonses.com>

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On Wed, Aug 02, 2023 at 03:46:29PM +0000, Cosmin Stejerean wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Aug 2, 2023, at 7:30 AM, Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Michael Niedermayer (12023-08-02):
> >> The libraries should be split into runtime loadable plugins
> >> Not only would that make tools alot smaller it also would allow
> >> development of code available in ffmpeg that is maintained outside
> >> FFmpeg.
> >> 
> >> I suggested this previosuly, it is of course not a "simple" thing
> >> to do.
> > 
> > No, it would be a terrible mistake.
> > 
> > And mostly, people who suggest or demand that do it based on
> > misconceptions about how linking works and/or have no actual scenario
> > where that would help.
> > 
> > But this is another discussion entirely.
> 
> This indeed feels like a separate discussion, but should we want to have that discussion I'd be happy to both provide some use cases as well as contribute code to facilitate the implementation. 
> 

> My understanding however is that the community is opposed to dynamically loaded plugins on principle, because it would make it easier to distribute proprietary plugins and sidestep the intent of the copyleft licensing.

I dont know if there is opposition or just inertia and more sexy things to work on
but if theres fear of proprietary plugins just do this:

1. give the plugin a license field
2. check that the license field matches a GPL compatible license before loading

thx

[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us
and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what
is excellent in them. -- Plutarch

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