A GitHub repository maintained by Rockchip has been disabled following a DMCA takedown request filed by a contributor to the FFmpeg project. The company was informed about the problem nearly two years ago, but despite repeated assurances, it has still taken no action to resolve it. In the end, the expected happened.
The complaint alleges that Rockchip’s Media Process Platform (MPP) repository contains multiple files derived directly from FFmpeg’s libavcodec codebase and that the reuse violates the terms of the LGPL license under which FFmpeg is distributed.
For those unfamiliar, Rockchip is a Chinese semiconductor company best known for designing system-on-chip platforms widely used in single-board computers, Android devices, media players, and embedded Linux systems.
Waiting 2 years seems so gracious, I couldn’t even fault them if they did it nearly immediately either.
The tweets in question:
The DMCA repository:
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/mppNeither Rockchips English news or their x.com profile has written anything since 2023:
https://www.rock-chips.com/a/en/News/Press_Releases/index.html
They’re still active in China though:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/07/18/rockchip-unveils-rk3668-10-core-arm-cortex-a730-cortex-a530-soc-with-16-tops-npu-rk182x-llm-vlm-co-processor/We really need a better answer to stuff like this than DMCA takedowns. They make sense for someone who doesn’t want their stuff made available at all, but it’s kinda the opposite of what’s needed for copyleft violations.
They directly copy pasted ffmpeg code without even bothering to change the comments or remove commented out sections and ignored inquiries for years. Fuck em
Oh I’m not complaining that action was taken. The issue is that the tools available to us are antithetical to copyleft. All the takedown means is that nobody gets access to this code, whereas what we need is for everyone to get access to it under the proper license.