Licensing my project which uses this

[Udhayarajan]

Hello everyone, I have created an Android app that uses FFmpegKit. I need to modify FFmpegKit to load library from external storage. How far is modifing this library is legal? If I do so what license is suitable for my project. Note: My Project is also going to be an open source.

[tanersener]

See Using FFmpegKit in Commercial Applications.

[machty]

@tanersener That wiki entry starts off by noting that the Apple libs are all static libraries, but then the first paragraph mentions "It can be hard to achieve that in the Apple App Store"... well, in the case of Apple, isn't it completely impossible because the Apple libs are static?

I'm probably not alone in feeling confused and somewhat gaslit by some of the explanations I've read online about whether FFmpeg can actually, for real, be used in a commercial iOS/Android apps. Is there a list of commercial iOS/Android applications that use FFmpeg that I could review to see how/whether they actually expose their object files for static linkage, or offer instructions on how to link against their software in an LGPL-compliant manner?

Absent that, I just get the sense that there's a massive hush-hush don't-ask-don't-tell policy, and in truth there is no such thing as an actually-LGPL complaint mobile app that uses FFmpeg. Am I wrong?

[tanersener]

The most important part of this scheme is, users of commercial application should be able to and allowed to replace FFmpegKit library with another version. It can be hard to achieve that in Apple App Store and Google Play Store, so be aware of this situation.

The first paragraph doesn't mention anything about Apple libraries being static or shared. It simply says that replacing the libraries (static or dynamic) of an app installed via App Store can be hard. I don't know how it can be done personally.

There are mobile applications out there that are clearly using FFmpeg. They say they do. I don't know if they are satisfying licensing conditions or not. So, I can't recommend any of them.

License Compliance Checklist in ffmpeg website is quite detailed. I suggest looking into it.