FFmpeg is distributed with another programs and its developers don't care

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Why Audacity’s developers can’t? They are chickens

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So you suggest that the makers of Audacity don’t care about legal restrictions and just break the law?

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I am not a lawyer - but it looks to me as though the licensing regime for FFmpeg has changed and is now available to be used within other software apps without payment.

See this “Legal” page from the FFmpeg website: FFmpeg License and Legal Considerations

Wikipedia also indicates that this is indeed the case: FFmpeg - Wikipedia

@teetow @Tantacrul does this mean that FFmpeg could indeed be incorporated legally into Audacity without license payment being due?

Peter.

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Not quite: FFmpeg itself is free and open source, that is to say, the copyright on specific implementation that FFmpeg did is freely licensed (LGPL or GPL). However, patents are a different game: FFmpeg considers itself to not be a computer program, because all they put on their website is code, not binaries. Patents care about functionality: If there’s a patent on “an apparatus to clear snow using a concave surface” (ie: a snow plow), it doesn’t matter that you made your snow plow using open source designs, you’re still violating the patent – unless you use one of those rotary snow brushes. Similarly, any computer program which encode AAC (M4A) isby definition violating the patent, unless they pay about a dollar for each copy of the software they sell. The best solution for users is to use the equivalent of a rotary snow brush, ie a different format.

That said:

  • There are a number of patent-free encoders in FFmpeg, including ones for MKA. If these formats are reasonably widely used, it would be worth including them directly in Audacity. This most recently happened with Opus and Wavpack.
  • Unlike copyright, patents last relatively briefly. The patents on parts of AAC and WMA already have expired, and it’s possible that Audacity could incorporate these codecs already now. However, the licensing agency for AAC still held 3077 patents related to it last time I checked, and there only needs to be a single valid patent left over to require the full license payment. As such, it isn’t quite risk-free to incorporate these things now – especially given that the Audacity team now is belonging to an entity that you could squeeze millions of dollars out of.
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@LeoWattenberg

Many thanks for that insightful heads up Leo.