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Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

tanersener.medium.com

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Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#21

Post by weinzierl »

"To get clarity, I consulted an IP law firm. Their review raised concerns about potential risks related to licensing and patents. They recommended retiring the project and removing older binaries as the safest option. They did suggest some alternative paths, but those options would have required significant time, effort, and money, neither of which I could commit."

Thanks to Taner Sener for putting in all the effort! I guess most technical people shudder at the mere thought of dealing with all the legal matters.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#22

Post by dragonwriter »

rwmj wrote: post #10
scosman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are writing the article for a specific audience: ffmpegkit users. All tech articles assume some prior technical knowledge.

And yet it was posted here and many people who know nothing of the project will read it. Writing a sentence saying what the thing is takes a few words.

> And yet it was posted here

Not by the author, so I don't see how that impacts how it should be written; and HN users are free to ignore things that don't interest them, or to spend a few minutes with a search engine learning context for things that seem like they might, but which are unfamiliar (and are generally competent to both of those things as appropriate.)

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#24

Post by chefandy »

doawoo wrote: post #18

Having dealt with MPEG-LA before, it makes me so wildly angry that a company composed of nothing but lawyers can suck money out of any product that wants to use a widely supported, arguably critical video codec. The process for reporting to them for sales is also horrible. Uploading excel spreadsheets to an ASP.NET backend that's barely holding together. It's minimal effort from them to leverage all possible legal ac…

As an artist, this sort of shit makes me apoplectic. I’m frustrated that society has no way to compensate people that do creative work for a living other than the same mechanism that virii like this extract money from other people’s work using a paper turnstile and heavy penalties for violations. And between the two kinds of entities, only one realistically even has the significant resources needed to engage the mechanism. I understand that a lot of folks in tech consider both of these usages to be largely equivalent but that’s a different conversation.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#26

Post by dragonwriter »

rwmj wrote: post #14
Igrom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And clicking on a link to GitHub takes no time at all. Is there anything wrong with that approach? Furthermore, I feel that you shouldn't blame the author for omissions if their post is shared outside of the intended audience.

We could make every reader do the extra work, or the author could write a few words once.

Well, yeah, you can go bug the authors of stories like this that someone (not the author!) at HN decides to post a link to that they need to change how they write for the benefit of an audience they aren't actively seeking, but I doubt that will do much good.

But its especially silly to post on HN that authors need to change how they are writing in a thread on an article that wasn't posted here by the author, and where there is no indication that the author is a member of the community.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#27

Post by amiga386 »

Gormo wrote: post #12

It seems really strange that a library that wraps FFMpeg is being discontinued due to patent concerns with the underlying codecs, but those codecs are only implemented in FFMpeg itself, which continues along without issues.

ffmpeg, VLC and its associated projects are hosted in France. There aren't any US companies for the MAFIAA to shakedown, and if they tried to file for software patent infringement in France, the French courts would tell them to fuck off.

So they go after ffmpeg's US-based users/customers instead.

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#28

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

amiga386 wrote: post #27
Gormo wrote: post #12

It seems really strange that a library that wraps FFMpeg is being discontinued due to patent concerns with the underlying codecs, but those codecs are only implemented in FFMpeg itself, which continues along without issues.

ffmpeg, VLC and its associated projects are hosted in France. There aren't any US companies for the MAFIAA to shakedown, and if they tried to file for software patent infringement in France, the French courts would tell them to fuck off. So they go after ffmpeg's US-based users/customers instead.

Do French courts enforce patents differently?

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#29

Post by rwmj »

xg15 wrote: post #19
retrocryptid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there was a human who posted a link to the OP's post here on HN. It is -that- human who was being asked to provide context since they should have know that by posting a link to HN, they are posting a link to a community that may be different from the OP's original audience. i.e.- this was not a rerquest or taner saner to provide context, but a request for @ericdiao to provide context.

Except HN explicitly discourages this: You can intentionally submit either a text post or a link, but not both. For links, you could theoretically edit the title, but there too, the guidelines state that you should just use the original title from the article if possible.

Yes, it's a shame that HN doesn't include a short 1- or 2-sentence summary of each article (on the front page).

Re: Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

#30

Post by rs186 »

amiga386 wrote: post #27
Gormo wrote: post #12

It seems really strange that a library that wraps FFMpeg is being discontinued due to patent concerns with the underlying codecs, but those codecs are only implemented in FFMpeg itself, which continues along without issues.

ffmpeg, VLC and its associated projects are hosted in France. There aren't any US companies for the MAFIAA to shakedown, and if they tried to file for software patent infringement in France, the French courts would tell them to fuck off. So they go after ffmpeg's US-based users/customers instead.

Part of me wish that there are teams in China or Russia who can take over the development and ignore all the idiotic demands from these associations.
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