Demoting ffmpeg and rdepends to multiverse

On Thu, Nov 03, 2005, Sebastian Dröge wrote:

> > The reason for the Debian package shipping static libraries rather than 
> > dynamic ones is because the ffmpeg developers don't provide a stable 
> > ABI. If you want to change that, then you'll need to track the ABI 
> > closely and change the SONAME of the libraries every time it changes in 
> > an incompatible way. That'll then require rebuilding the entire rdepends 
> > tree.
> 
> Yes, but that way breakages (i.e. package xy must be ported to new
> ffmpeg API, FTBFS otherwise) are found instantly.

   No. They are even harder to find, because some of them only occur at
runtime when the specific symbols that broke the ABI are used.

> Also we won't ship the complete source for the binary anymore as
> we have only a newer ffmpeg version in our archives but the package's
> binaries _contain_ an older ffmpeg version. This is a possible
> violation of the GPL!

   This may be right, but is a problem for virtually every ELF binary
because crt*.so and libgcc. Besides, it's not very hard to communicate
and ask FFmpeg-using packagers to rebuild their packages.

> I'm neither... but it's only non-free in the sense of patent-covered.
> And as I said before, I believe even our current package needs to be in
> Multiverse for that reasons.

   No. VLC has a plugin system that lets you split the package into a
"free" universe package and a multiverse package that has everything you
do not like.

-- 
Sam.