[mythtv] Android build

[Jean-Yves Avenard]

On Wed, 3 May 2023 at 02:06, David Engel <david at istwok.net> wrote:
>
> Good question but an even more relevant one is this.  Vlc and Mpv and
> probably other, ffmpeg-based, media players are availalbe in hte play
> store for free.  How do they handle the licensing?

They use a FFmpeg with patent encumbered codec not compiled in (so
exclude H264, H265, AAC), for those they use Android's MediaCodec
instead,
That's what Linux distribution such as Suse are also doing.

While I worked at Mozilla, legal deemed that so long that you didn't
ship code with patent encumbered, you'll be fine. So using the
*system*'s ffmpeg was okay.
Firefox ships its own copy of FFmpeg but only for VP9, VP8 and FLAC codecs

That's also why there's a difference between the OpenSource chromium
and Google's Chrome.
One ships with patent encumbered codecs opted-out
The other ships with it all, as Google pays the licensing fees. They
use the number of downloads to determine how much it will cost,
knowing that for H264 they have reached a cap and so it's a fixed-fee.

That's why OpenH264 is free too, there's a license to pay but Cisco
has reached the cap already.