Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

Debian Bug report #981451 led to the removal of liblivemedia because: It contains non-free code
from RFC 3550 (#981439). Upstream is not showing an activity to fix this issue, so let's get rid of it.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

I recently contacted support@live555.com, the upstream maintainer of live555 asking him about the status of
this issue, some time later he replied:

"Mike,

I have just installed a new version (2025.04.25) of the “LIVE555 Streaming Media” code
that will resolve this (all files in the code now have the same (LGPL) license)."

   * What was the outcome of this action?

I am uncertain if this change meets everything expected by the Debian maintainers, if there are lingering
issues around recoding the source copied from RFC 3550 I offer my assistance in doing that recoding if the
live555 maintainer doesn't want to handle it himself.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

I expected RTSP streaming video support to be replaced in packages like vlc, ffmpeg and others long before
now, but still Debian and its downstream distributions make restoration of RTSP streaming support quite
difficult for end users, like me.

I hope that by addressing the root cause issues that got liblivemedia removed in the first place, users
of RTSP protocol (quite common in the IP video camera arena) can once again enjoy seamless support from
Debian packages like vlc and many others, as they did before liblivemedia was removed.

Thank you,

Mike Inman
mangocats@gmail.com

Dear Debian maintainers,

I've been in touch with Henning Schulzrinne, who is the author of the
code in question, and he agreed to explicitly put the code under the
3-clause BSD license. That should resolve all doubt about whether
liblivemedia from live555 can be included in Debian.

Henning, could you please reply-all to this email with the same text
that you sent me yesterday? (Actually, could you make one small
change: Add a 1-line paragraph "Copyright 2003 Henning Schulzrinne"
before "Redistribution and use..." just so that your name is in the
declaration itself?)

As the author of RFC 3550 Appendix A.7, I agree to license it under the
3-clause BSD license:

Copyright 2003 Henning Schulzrinne, Steve Casner, Ron Frederick, Van
Jacobson

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

(1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

(2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

(3) The name of the authors may not be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN
NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.