Hector Martin

Right, good point, that was a misstatement on my part, I did indeed mean WebKit, which is what Blink is a fork of. And I did miss that BUILD file, but I'm still not 100% sure it's a violation.

The ffmpeg strings you found, for example, is BSD-license glue code written by Chromium engineers, not actual ffmpeg code. I've searched for strings that would have come from libavcodec and they're not there.

As for Blink itself I think they're loopholing it via Section 7: "You may place library facilities that are a work based on the Library side-by-side in a single library" >>

<< "[...]Accompany the combined library with a copy of the same work based on the Library, uncombined with any other library facilities" <-- this sounds like Chromium itself.

Only if the Google Chrome main binary, which is what links these things, is indeed 100% reproducible from the Chromium source only. If there is any secret sauce not included in Chromium, it doesn't qualify.

Section 7 doesn't include reproducibility. It just says you have to announce and distribute the "uncombined" form of the "work based on the Library".

If you're distributing something else that doesn't compile to the same binary, then you're not distributing "the uncombined form", you're distributing something else.

The whole thing is a bit handwavy. I think it can be interpreted either way and I think Google's lawyers are counting on being able to argue their interpretation if challenged.