[beagle3]

That’s a question for courts to decide. It hangs on what interpretation courts assign to “derivative work”.

There are claims both for and against this being a derivative work; for “standalone” use, the test is usually something like “if you didn’t use ffmpeg, would the product be significantly less useful?”

MySQL used to claim that including MySQL.exe in a product, even if you don’t link to it, makes that product a derivative work. The generally accepted wisdom is that it’s not.

I don’t know if this was ever tested in court.