[kolx]

Thank you for pointing this out, to be completely honest, I did not consider licensing because the website started as a collection of tools I built to run locally and get into video/audio codecs then I realised it is already a decent collection of tools that other people might want to use too. But I will be making the needed changes to comply fully tonight. At least I comply with this: `Do not misspell FFmpeg (two capitals F and lowercase "mpeg")` I realised I have some more reading to do regarding GPL vs LGPL because of the wasm project.

[jmaw]

You should look into how other companies and tools that use FFMPEG handle this situation.

I wonder if you can keep your application itself closed source, but make an open-source adapter that handles the interaction with FFMPEG.

I'm not super familiar with open source licensing, and IANAL, so make sure to do your own research :)

As an example, I believe Audacity required me to install ffmpeg manually myself, and add it to my path. This is slightly different since Audacity itself is also open source. But could be helpful to reference.

[noduerme]

Yes, Audacity definitely requires that. It can't open or save mp3s unless you separately install ffmpeg.

[kolx]

Thank you, I guess I won't be fixing any bugs tonight but at least I will figure out how to comply. I appreciate the help for real!

[alfg]

This is how I handle it with my latest project, https://video-commander.com.

Prompting the user to install, or auto-installing FFmpeg separately, rather than bundling the binary. The problem is FFmpeg can be configured in so many ways and the general install binaries are usually LGPL compatible.

[freedomben]

Any reason not to just open source it? Personally I'd love to hack on it :-) IANAL, but IMHO AGPL would be a good fit here as it complies with LGPL and also ensures nobody besides you (the copyright holder) can stand it up for profit without contributing back).

[kolx]

I never maintained an open source project and not sure how to even do it properly. I am also not sure how much effort would I have to put to an open source project. I imagine I would need to collaborate with a pretty much anyone who has an interest in the area. Again not that I mind just not sure how much time I have to spare. Right now this is a really slow process and tbh I have to rely on manual testing at least for the editor.

[Mashimo]

Nah, besides sharing the code you don't have to do anything.

Most people would want you to upload the code to github, then they can star and clone it with ease. But you don't have to have an issue tracker, and you certainly don't have to read any of the issues or pull request. You can ignore or disable that.

I think even just having a up to date .zip with all the code would be technically enough.

[circuit10]

You can just the post the code somewhere, it doesn’t have to be good and you don’t have to do anything else with it

Apart from ensuring there’s not anything confidential in the code like API keys (which you shouldn’t have anyway, unless it’s just in comments) it won’t take any extra work unless you want to put effort into that side of things

[qingcharles]

You don't have to collaborate with anyone. Just stick the code up on GitHub and if people file issues or PRs, then you can engage or not as you please. There are plenty of projects that are open source but don't accept any public modifications.

You might just find you end up with some folks who genuinely want to help out, though.

[netdevphoenix]

> Any reason not to just open source it?

Mmmm...potential commercialisation? Always find it curious that people expect to get source code for free in ways that they don't do for other work (ask George Martin to release his drafts and notes).

[mbesto]

The parent commenter is making that comment because this is precisely the nature of why the GPL license exists. Most of the processing of this application is FFMPEG, so why should someone who has done zero development on that library commercialize it?

[afavour]

Most of the processing of the application is FFMPEG yes, but there's a whole lot of application outside of the processing. Video editors UIs that don't make you want to tear your hair out are a valuable commodity and I think OP has the right to commercialize that if they want to. They just need to use FFMPEG in the right way as they do it.

[mbesto]

This application doesn't work without FFMPEG. I'm not arguing that the wrapper isn't valuable, I'm saying there is a significant chunk of it that is required for us to work is an open source library.

[soperj]

that's the same thing with the mach kernel and OSX, but you don't see anyone clamoring for one of the richest companies on earth to open source their OS.

[jpc0]

From what I understand about this application ffmpeg of only used for export? That is very little of the processing of true, they mentioned the webcodec is used extensively and likely the only real requirement on ffmpeg is muxing into mp4 which to be entirely honest isn't much processing.

[mbesto]

https://vidstudio.app/licenses

VidStudio invokes FFmpeg — a free multimedia framework — to handle certain video and audio processing operations. FFmpeg is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 (or later).

The FFmpeg WebAssembly binary is not hosted or redistributed by VidStudio. Your browser fetches it directly from the public npm mirror at cdn.jsdelivr.net the first time you use a feature that requires it.

FFmpeg source code is available from ffmpegwasm/ffmpeg.wasm (the WebAssembly port) and git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git (upstream FFmpeg). The full text of the GPL v2 license is available at gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.

[socalgal2]

FFmpeg doesn't disallow commercialization. Or to put it another way, the authors of FFmpeg specifically allowed commercialization. As long as you follow the LGPL you're free to commercialize your app that uses FFmeg

[sroussey]

Or the other likely version: prevent commercialization. No source means that someone can’t make a fork, put on a new domain, run ads and charge money for his work.

[mghackerlady]

The problem is you can commercialise free software if you're creative about it. RMS made a decent amount of money working on emacs, redhat and SUSE exist, google has managed to commercialise chromium

[freedomben]

> The problem is you can commercialise free software if you're creative about it.

Did you mean to say that it is a problem? From the rest of your comment, and in the context of GP's comment, it sounds like commercializing is NOT a problem.

[mghackerlady]

prev said that they might not be willing to release the source code so they can commercialise it

[randomtoast]

Is open source and commercialisation an exclusive or?

[freedomben]

> Mmmm...potential commercialisation?

Hence why I asked the question... And not everybody does everything for commercial reasons, so it would be dumb to assume that and therefore not ask the question.

> Always find it curious that people expect to get source code for free in ways that they don't do for other work (ask George Martin to release his drafts and notes).

Where in my question did you get that I expect to get source code for free in ways that I don't for other work?

But regardless, you do know that open source is a common thing right? People open source things all the time, especially on HN.

Also OP already says they don't do any uploading of your videos to the cloud, so this thing already runs local-only. It's not like there is a shortage of video editors around (including ... open source ... video editors)

[zenmac]

Wonder this guy is doing it? Or is it also not open sourced?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42207002

[pdyc]

that guy is not including ffmpeg and is not encoding in browser. What he is doing is generating a ffmpeg command that you can run on your cli/scripts etc.

PS: i am that guy :-)