FFmpeg Files DMCA Against Rockchip: 2-Year GPL Standoff

GitHub disabled Rockchip’s Media Process Platform repository today, December 26, 2025, after an FFmpeg developer filed a DMCA takedown notice on December 18 following a two-year license violation standoff. Rockchip—a major Chinese ARM chipmaker whose SoCs power millions of media devices—copied thousands of lines from FFmpeg’s libavcodec library, stripped the original copyright notices, claimed authorship, and relicensed the code from LGPL to Apache without permission. FFmpeg first called them out publicly in February 2024. Rockchip ignored the requests.

What Rockchip Did Wrong: GPL Violation Breakdown

The violations were blatant. Rockchip lifted H.265, AV1, and VP9 decoder code directly from FFmpeg, removed copyright notices (required under LGPL), falsely claimed Rockchip authored the code, and switched the license from LGPL v2.1 to Apache 2.0—a permissive license that removes all the protections FFmpeg’s authors intended.

Moreover, this isn’t a gray area or accidental oversight. LGPL explicitly requires attribution, copyright preservation, and keeping the same license for derivative works. Rockchip violated all three. FFmpeg opened GitHub issue #530 on February 23, 2024, with side-by-side code comparisons showing exact matches. Rockchip’s response? Radio silence for 22 months.

Two Years of Patience: The DMCA Timeline

However, the timeline matters here. FFmpeg publicly accused Rockchip in February 2024. They provided evidence, filed a GitHub issue, and waited. And waited. Rockchip’s last recorded response suggested “no intention to resolve the matter.” No source updates. No attribution added. No license corrections. The repository stayed active with stolen code for nearly two years.

On December 18, 2025, FFmpeg filed a formal DMCA takedown notice with GitHub. Today, December 26, GitHub disabled the repository. The Hacker News discussion hit the front page with 267 points, and the consensus is clear: 2 years is more than reasonable. DMCA wasn’t FFmpeg’s first move—it was their last resort after every diplomatic attempt failed.

DMCA Works for GPL Enforcement

Here’s what matters: DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) protects copyrighted works, and GPL/LGPL violations are copyright infringement. If you violate the license terms, you have no permission to distribute the code—making it illegal copying. Furthermore, copyright holders can file DMCA takedowns on platforms like GitHub, and the platform must disable access within 24-72 hours.

The precedents are real. In February 2024, a Paris court awarded €860,000 ($1 million) to Entr’ouvert for Orange’s GPL violations—the largest GPL enforcement judgment on record. Earlier cases include Matthew Garrett’s successful DMCA on behalf of Ubuntu and the Minecraft/Bukkit takedown in 2014. Consequently, courts take GPL seriously, and they impose real financial penalties when companies violate it.

The Pattern: Allwinner and Chinese Chipmakers

Rockchip isn’t alone in this behavior. Allwinner, another Chinese chipmaker, pulled the same stunt in 2015. They used LGPL FFmpeg code in their CedarX media library without releasing source, included binary blobs in kernel trees (a clear GPL violation), and ignored community requests for years—even after joining the Linux Foundation in June 2015. The pattern is obvious: both companies make ARM SoCs for media devices, both stole FFmpeg code, both stripped copyright, both relicensed without permission, and both ignored complaints for years.

The community response to Allwinner was blunt: “Allwinner is trying to get away with the maximum of what it thinks it can get away with.” Sound familiar? This suggests systemic GPL compliance issues in the Chinese chip industry, and it’s costing them credibility. Additionally, developers remember which companies respect licenses and which don’t.

What Happens Next: Rockchip’s Options

Rockchip has three options. Option one: full compliance—restore FFmpeg’s copyright notices, relicense the affected files back to LGPL v2.1, add proper attribution to documentation, and resubmit to GitHub. It’s the cheapest and fastest fix, taking hours instead of months, and it repairs the reputation damage. Option two: remove all FFmpeg code and rewrite the H.265, AV1, and VP9 decoders from scratch—time-consuming, expensive, and likely to produce inferior results. Option three: do nothing, let the repository stay down, and watch developers migrate to third-party forks while risking a lawsuit with an €860,000 precedent hanging overhead.

For developers using Rockchip hardware, the path forward is clear: switch to properly licensed alternatives like nyanmisaka’s ffmpeg-rockchip fork, which provides FFmpeg with Rockchip MPP support under the correct license. Your hardware still works—you just need a library that respects the law.

The lesson here isn’t complicated. GPL and LGPL are enforceable with real legal and financial consequences. Two years of patience is more than generous. And “move fast and break things” doesn’t apply to software licenses. In conclusion, compliance is cheaper than enforcement, and reputation matters—developers remember the bad actors.