GitHub has blocked the official repository of the Chinese company Rockchip, where the MPP (Media Process Platform) module was developed, providing access to the capabilities of hardware-accelerated video and image processing on Rockchip chips. The blocking was done under the existing U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) after a complaint from the developers of the FFmpeg project.
In February 2024, FFmpeg developers identified the use in the av1d_cbs module code of several thousand lines of code directly copied from the H.265 decoder developed by FFmpeg, which is part of the libavcodec library. The code was transferred with a license change from LGPLv2.1 to Apache 2.0, which is unacceptable due to their incompatibility.
A representative from Rockchip acknowledged the issue, apologized for not understanding the incompatibility between the LGPL and Apache licenses, and promised to rectify the violation and replace the code in an upcoming update. Almost two years have passed since then, but the promise to replace the code remains unfulfilled.
Furthermore, additional analysis showed that similarly, code was transferred from libavcodec to 10 more MPP files — av1d_codec.h, av1d_parser2_syntax.c, h265d_codec.h, h265d_parser.c, h265d_ps.c, vp9d_codec.h, vp9d_parser.c, vp9data.h, vpx_rac.c, vpx_rac.h. The code structure, identifier names, and comments in the specified files are identical to the code from FFmpeg, except for commented references to FFmpeg's internal functions. During the transfer, a different license (Apache 2.0) was indicated, a copyright notice was removed, and authorship information was altered.
FFmpeg representatives grew tired of waiting for the promised rectification of the violations and filed a DMCA complaint with GitHub, after which GitHub blocked the repository. The proposed remedial measures include removing false authorship claims by Rockchip from the code files, restoring the original copyright notice from FFmpeg, and transitioning to the distribution of code under a license compatible with LGPLv2.1.
Source: opennet.ru
