Comment by pixtur
5 hours ago
I think the parts that run, run surprisingly well. Performance on Wine is incredible. I would argue faster than on Windows.
But there are a bunch of issues related to internal Windows APIs that need to be resolved, esp. related to encoding videos with MS Media Foundation. We're planning to replace that with ffmpeg / libav. But sadly due to GPL and patent issues, bundling an encoder is then even more complex.
Default builds of ffmpeg are lgpl licensed, which shouldn't cause you GPL issues, but could still cause patent issues. Another option is to depend on ffmpeg as an external program communicated with via pipe. You can supply a "safe" ffmpeg and allow users to point to a better ffmpeg. Ultimately though, it seems that using whatever blender supports should be safe from a patent point of view.