The FFmpeg vs. Libav War Continues In Debian Land

An FFmpeg package is closer to reaching Debian after years of being rejected in favor of its forked libav alternative, but not all are happy with FFmpeg's reappearance.

A co-maintainer of the potential FFmpeg Debian packages who is also involved in upstream FFmpeg development wrote into Phoronix that the discussion has reignited about allowing FFmpeg back inside Debian. However, the packages have yet to be allowed into Debian experimental but the discussion is ongoing.

Those wishing to see the ongoing discussion about allowing FFmpeg back inside Debian can follow the comments to Debian.org Bug #729203.

Long story short, due to security concerns, package incompatibility issues, and being too short of time before the Debian 8.0 Jessie release, and there's some measurable resistance to adding FFmpeg back to the repository. However, others are after FFmpeg in Debian for features it has over Libav with regard to some codecs and other abilities, some programs not compiling against Libav, and other differences between it and the forked Libav project. Time will tell if/when FFmpeg will be allowed back in Debian and whether it will happen in time for the 8.0 Jessie releae.