1 Most files in FFmpeg are under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1
2 or later (LGPL v2.1+). Read the file COPYING.LGPL for details. Some other files
3 have a MIT/X11/BSD-style license. In combination the LGPL v2.1+ applies to
6 Some optional parts of FFmpeg are licensed under the GNU General Public License
7 version 2 or later (GPL v2+). See the file COPYING.GPL for details. None of
8 these parts are used by default, you have to explicitly pass --enable-gpl to
9 configure to activate them. In this case, FFmpeg's license changes to GPL v2+.
11 Specifically, the GPL parts of FFmpeg are
14 - some x86 optimizations in libswscale
15 - optional x86 optimizations in the files
16 libavcodec/x86/h264_deblock_sse2.asm
17 libavcodec/x86/h264_idct_sse2.asm
18 libavcodec/x86/idct_mmx.c
19 - the AC-3 decoder in libavcodec/ac3dec.c
20 - the X11 grabber in libavdevice/x11grab.c
22 Some external libraries, e.g. libx264, are under GPL and can be used in
23 conjunction with FFmpeg. They require --enable-gpl to be passed to configure
26 The nonfree external libraries libamrnb and libamrwb can be hooked up in FFmpeg.
27 You need to pass --enable-nonfree to configure to enable them. Employ this
28 option with care as FFmpeg then becomes nonfree and unredistributable.
30 There are a handful of files under other licensing terms, namely:
32 * The files libavcodec/jfdctfst.c, libavcodec/jfdctint.c, libavcodec/jrevdct.c
33 are taken from libjpeg, see the top of the files for licensing details.