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Issue created by Bruno Korbar@bjuncek4 of 4 checklist items completed4/4 checklist items

Clarification about PyAV license?

Overview

License file of PyAV is advertised as BSD3; however, as in conda-forge it is packaged directly with (non-free) version of FFMPEG, shouldn't the binaries should be advertised as GPL license as well?

Expected behavior

Whilst the codebase is and can be BSD3 licensed, it should be noted for the user that installation of the binaries makes the entire package GPL-licensed. For example, conda-forge FFMPEG is clearly marked as being GPL as a binary in their feedstock. OpenCV on another hand has a note in their license file that user takes responsibility for non-free FFMPEG as it's redistributed with it's packages.

Actual behavior

Licensing is at the moment mentioned in the license file linked above, in the docs, and conda-forge/pypi feedstocks respectively. There is no mentioning of a usage of non-free FFMPEG, or GPL license.

When submitting bug report, I found the mention in the collection script (see output bellow), but I think it should be clearly marked in the repo/feedstocks as well.

PyAV v8.0.3
git origin: git@github.com:PyAV-Org/PyAV
git commit: unknown-commit
[ ... ]
library license: GPL version 2 or later
libavcodec     58. 54.100
[ ... ]

Investigation

FFMPEG the is mostly, LGPL (thus allowing dynamic linking without license change), but FFMPEG built in conda-forge (and the one that is installed by default when one installs pyav from the conda-forge), is built with --enable-gpl flag set, making it GPL license (see here for details) that does not allow dynamic linking.

As PyAV links to the GPL version of FFMPEG, unless I misunderstand the way PyAV links to FFMPEG, that the binaries should be advertised as such, either in the repository directly (see opencv example above as an option) or in the pypi/conda-forge directly.

I have done the following: