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A comment on FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub. Parent comment

Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by doctorpangloss on Friday December 26, 2025 @11:43PM (#46399210)
I like FFmpeg, I hate doing the whole whataboutism thing, especially because FFmpeg is plainly in the right here, but... listen, FFmpeg as a product is a bunch of license violations too. Something something patents, something something, "doctrine of unclean hands." I worry that HN downvotes people who are trying to address the bigger picture here, because the net result of a lack of nuance always winds up being, "Okay, the real winners are Google and Apple."
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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by kortilla on Friday December 26, 2025 @11:50PM (#46399238)
Independent implementations of an algorithm are a different dimension from software licensing. So the “unclean hands” argument doesn’t hold water here.

Patents != copyright

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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by webstrand on Saturday December 27, 2025 @01:25AM (#46399627)
What licenses are they violating?
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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by reedciccio on Saturday December 27, 2025 @06:35AM (#46401069)
They don't violate licenses otherwise they would have been blown out of existence a long time ago, drown lawsuit after lawsuit.
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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by doctorpangloss on Saturday December 27, 2025 @11:06AM (#46402760)
The ones that Microsoft Apple and Google pay for, the codec licenses. FFmpeg believes that only end users need licenses for codecs, which is not only their belief, but it’s not a belief of Microsoft, Apple and Google, and it is true the sense of the status quo, but also, LGPL violations are a status quo. So you can see how it’s a bad idea for FFmpeg to make a stink about licenses.
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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by saghm on Saturday December 27, 2025 @01:46AM (#46399712)
With the exception of the Apache license, most major licenses don't cover patents. I have no idea about proprietary licenses if that's what you're talking about here, but it's a bit unclear, so it might help to go into more details than "something something" if you're intending to make a compelling case.
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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by Conan_Kudo on Saturday December 27, 2025 @07:24AM (#46401356)
The GNU v3 licenses all cover software patents too, and parts of FFmpeg are under those licenses too (though I guess not the code copied and subject to this takedown, which is LGPLv2.1+).
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Re:FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub by 7bit on Saturday December 27, 2025 @06:08AM (#46400941)
> I hate doing the whole whataboutism thing [...], but...

... yet, you did it anyway, without going into detail or providing any clue where these violations (as you claim) are.

If there's any substance to what you say, provide some details and proof, so it can be a constructive discussion, rather than just noise.

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