UE Licensing terms violated by UE Engine included 3rd party library (Adv Media Framework)

General Feedback & Requests
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Hi, we are doing a final review before releasing a small UE5.3 app and need to resolve a potential issue / contradiction with the standard license agreement.

  1. UE license agreement 5a : prohibits using the engine with code or content under the LGPL (unless “merely linking a dynamically shared library”)

  2. “AdvancedMediaFrameworkSDK_liscence.txt” from the UE5.3 ThirdPartyLicensing folder, included with engine, states “This software uses libraries from the FFmpeg project under the LGPLv2.1.”.

Thus the base engine appears to use libraries which preclude compliance with the licensing agreement.

Our understanding is that the media framework is built into the engine. We are not building from source but in our case we are specifically using calls to the “media framework” in our own project plugin code. It is not clear to us if this is the same as “AdvancedMediaFramework” from the Engine’s licensing folder but based on the name collision we need to be certain.

Our packaged build does not output anything called mediaframework in the third party library subfolder, nor do we see an ffmpeg dll in the build. We can not readily determine if the prebuilt engine is “merely linking a dll” or if the linkage is static and sufficient to violate the terms of the UE agreement.

Can anyone, ideally from Epic’s side, clarify this apparent licensing contradiction?

Equally worrisome, in that specific third party license, is the statement “For clarity, you will pay any royalties due for such third party technologies, which may include the Media
Technologies that are owed as a result of AMD providing the Software to you”.

However there is no information on the media framework pages referring to how or if the module uses FFMPEG. The UE documentation for the media framework implies the framework uses the WMF provided framework and codecs. The license text seems to imply FFMPEG is potentially installed, opening the UE developer up to claims from those various right holders - hopefully there is a way we can ensure the engine does not include FFMPEG as part of our distribution?