Disambiguation needed about AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE and HEVC in the Linux driver

[tytan652]

• HEVC files in the Linux driver are under MIT license
• Setting AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE to ON, disables those HEVC files even if those are MIT licensed

I think the notion of HEVC patent and AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE needs to be split if the files are really under MIT.

[paulh-aja]

Which files are you referring to that you are concerned about?

There are some closed-source HEVC codec files that are not part of the open source libajantv2 repo, whose inclusion is controlled by the AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE variable.

The intention behind that variable was to allow gating any proprietary code in the library, present and future.

[tytan652]

Example: https://github.com/aja-video/libajantv2/blob/08a5a3e7e5fce4abf7deb11567dfd795da4a4ba0/driver/linux/hevcdriver.c

It's guarded behind NOT AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE but it's marked as MIT licensed in the file.

Edit: The whole HEVC part of the Linux driver is MIT

[tytan652]

For more context the Linux driver Makefile have no mention that HEVC part is closed source, unlike the CMake with AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE.

[paulh-aja]

I think this might have been an error in the Linux driver's CMakeLists. I'll check with the rest of the team. I believe those hevc*.h/.c files in the Linux driver are part of the Kona HEVC card driver, are MIT-licensed, and thus probably shouldn't be omitted if AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE is set to ON.

However, there are some proprietary HEVC codec files in the ajantv2 component that are closed-source and not included in the libajantv2 open-source repo. These are only built into the ajantv2 library if AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE is set to OFF.

[tytan652]

However, there are some proprietary HEVC codec files in the ajantv2 component that are closed-source and not included in the libajantv2 open-source repo. These are only built into the ajantv2 library if AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE is set to OFF.

I forgot to mention this, I got the purpose AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE that you describe since a while. It's really those "hevc*.h/.c files" in the Linux driver that were that needed a disambiguation since those are MIT licensed.

[paulh-aja]

It looks like we did have an AJA_HEVC variable in the Makefile that enabled building of the Kona HEVC card driver, so I suppose it makes some sense that we separate that. The Kona HEVC Linux driver itself is open-source, it's just the SDK HEVC codec code that is not made available to open-source users, and is thus gated behind the AJANTV2_BUILD_OPENSOURCE CMake var. I'll see what the team wants to do here and make the necessary code changes, if any.