GitHub blocked the official repository of the Chinese company Rockchip, where the MPP (Media Process Platform) module was developed, enabling video and image processing acceleration on Rockchip chips. This action was taken under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) after a complaint from FFmpeg project developers.
In February 2024, FFmpeg developers discovered that code from the MPP’s av1d_cbs module had been directly copied from FFmpeg’s H.265 decoder. The code was improperly transferred to MPP under an incompatible Apache 2.0 license, violating the original LGPLv2.1 license.
A representative of Rockchip admitted the license violation, expressed regret for misunderstanding license compatibility, and pledged to rectify the issue in a future update. However, nearly two years later, the promised code replacement has not been implemented.
Further investigation revealed that similar code transfers from FFmpeg’s libavcodec had occurred in 10 more MPP files, including av1d_codec.h, av1d_parser2_syntax.c, h265d_codec.h, h265d_parser.c, h265d_ps.c, vp9d_codec.h, vp9d_parser.c, vp9data.h, vpx_rac.c, and vpx_rac.h. These files contained identical code structure, identifier names, and comments to FFmpeg, with the exception of commented calls to internal FFmpeg functions. The transferred code had a different license (Apache 2.0), removed copyright notices, and altered author information.