[FFmpeg-devel] [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[FFmpeg-devel] [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi all

As suggested in the thread with similar subject, here is the vote.
Please reply with a "Yes" or "No" to cast your vote.
Vote ends in 7 days. All members of the GA can vote


"Yes"
 - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
 - The money will be used for FFmpeg and the FFmpeg community. (Maintenance, Development, Infra, Testing, Travel, Research, ...)
 - The money would also be used to hire / employ / contract FFmpeg Contributors fulltime or whatever the preferrance of each Contributor is.
 - Work / employment shall be preferrentially be given to FFmpeg Developers / FFmpeg community members.
    This preferrance for "FFmpeg Developers / FFmpeg community members" shall be the only preferrance.
    Outside that preferrance, a fair selection process shall be used by the General Assembly which
    only maximizes FFmpegs future.
 - Goals are
    * to provide secure full time employment for every major FFmpeg contributor, who wants to have that.
    * to accelerate growth and improve quality
 - A fair selection process shall be used by the FFmpeg Community to select what the money is used for, which maximizes FFmpegs future.
 - The FFmpeg community will be the decission maker about these funds.
 - The FFmpeg community will, at any time be able to change the process of how these decission are made by public consensus.
 - In absence of privacy concerns, decissions will be made by public consensus amongth the commuity, or if that fails,
   public vote of the GA members requireing a 2/3 majority to release funds for some use.
 - For cases with privacy concerns, decissions will be made by consensus or (2/3 maj) vote amongth the General Assembly.
 - We will use SPI to collect the funds.
 - If significant limitations or obstacles occur with SPI then we will consider founding our own FFmpeg foundation.

"No"
 - leave things as they are


Some Notes:
    Employing people is complex as it requires compliance to local regulations.
    Thus it should be expected that for employing developers, we will likely
    need to work together with local companies. That is if we want to
    employ someone in Country X we could partner with a company in Country X
    which then employs the developer and SPI would pay that company.

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Give a rich man 100$ and he will turn it into 1000$.
Give a poor man 1000$ and he will spend it.

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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Rémi Denis-Courmont via ffmpeg-devel]

Le torstaina 2. lokakuuta 2025, 15.55.16 Itä-Euroopan kesäaika Michael 
Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel a écrit :
> "Yes"
>  - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.

Repeating myself but that sentence does not mean anything. How are we supposed 
to vote on something so vague?

If FFmpeg is/becomes a legal entity of its, that sort of mission statement 
could be included in the statutes. That could justify an FFmpeg foundation 
funding trusted community members to attend tradeshows to look for sponsors 
and funding, for example. But that sentence cannot be thrown like this on its 
lonesome. Otherwise, FFmpeg is just a collection of assets such as trademarks, 
domain names and hardware held by SPI or Fabrice. Assets can't "actively seek 
sponsors".

I suppose that you mean the FFmpeg community. But as Gyan already pointed out 
in previous threads, even that's poorly defined. And in any case, One Does Not 
Simply compel the community to "actively seek sponsors". People can actively 
seek sponsors already, and they can also choose not to. Voting one way or the 
other will make no differences.

>  - The money will be used for FFmpeg and the FFmpeg community. (Maintenance,
> Development, Infra, Testing, Travel, Research, ...)

I don't think that we need to vote on funding infra, travel and testing. Those 
things are already being funded through SPI regardless of this call for vote, 
and nobody suggested that that should stop.

As for research, bluntly, this is too vague and open-ended. Normally research 
has deliverables such as peer-reviewed papers or working code or whatever. 
Also this is probably better handled via academia or via NLnet-type 
foundations.

>     Employing people is complex as it requires compliance to local
> regulations. Thus it should be expected that for employing developers, we
> will likely need to work together with local companies. That is if we want
> to employ someone in Country X we could partner with a company in Country X
> which then employs the developer and SPI would pay that company.

True. But with that in mind, what's the difference between the "yes" and "no" 
options? Developers can already be hired by local companies or run their own 
consultancies. I believe some people here are already doing just that.

-- 
德尼-库尔蒙‧雷米
Hagalund ny stad, f.d. Finska republik Nylands



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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi Remi

On Thu, Oct 02, 2025 at 07:28:48PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> Le torstaina 2. lokakuuta 2025, 15.55.16 Itä-Euroopan kesäaika Michael 
> Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel a écrit :
> > "Yes"
> >  - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
> 
> Repeating myself but that sentence does not mean anything. How are we supposed 
> to vote on something so vague?
> 
> If FFmpeg is/becomes a legal entity of its, that sort of mission statement 
> could be included in the statutes. That could justify an FFmpeg foundation 
> funding trusted community members to attend tradeshows to look for sponsors 
> and funding, for example. But that sentence cannot be thrown like this on its 
> lonesome. Otherwise, FFmpeg is just a collection of assets such as trademarks, 
> domain names and hardware held by SPI or Fabrice. Assets can't "actively seek 
> sponsors".
> 

> I suppose that you mean the FFmpeg community.

yes


> But as Gyan already pointed out
> in previous threads, even that's poorly defined. And in any case, One Does Not 
> Simply compel the community to "actively seek sponsors". People can actively 
> seek sponsors already, and they can also choose not to. Voting one way or the 
> other will make no differences.

The intend here is more, to decide on the direction.
Do we, as a team, want to actively look for sponsors or not ?

Without this direction, its very hard for one person to talk to sponsors, while
another publically maybe says, "FFmpeg does not look for sponsors".

Its to establish a common direction.


> 
> >  - The money will be used for FFmpeg and the FFmpeg community. (Maintenance,
> > Development, Infra, Testing, Travel, Research, ...)

[...]

> 
> As for research, bluntly, this is too vague and open-ended. Normally research 
> has deliverables such as peer-reviewed papers or working code or whatever. 
> Also this is probably better handled via academia or via NLnet-type 
> foundations.

Each individual use of money, would be agreed by consensus or 2/3 majority.

But we need a list, that we can show to sponsors, so they understand what they
are paying for.


> 
> >     Employing people is complex as it requires compliance to local
> > regulations. Thus it should be expected that for employing developers, we
> > will likely need to work together with local companies. That is if we want
> > to employ someone in Country X we could partner with a company in Country X
> > which then employs the developer and SPI would pay that company.
> 
> True. But with that in mind, what's the difference between the "yes" and "no" 
> options? Developers can already be hired by local companies or run their own 
> consultancies. I believe some people here are already doing just that.

I think, i have failed to explain this clearly.

One can go to bigcorp and ask them to donate 100k per year to FFmpeg/SPI,
but with:

"Yes"
  We can say, that this extra money will be used to hire people,
  and for maintaince and development.
  A Company that depends on FFmpeg has a reason to spend 100k/y here, its tiny for
  many companies, and they make MUCH larger sums with their buisness depending on
  FFmpeg.

"No"
  Here we can just say, that we have used SPI money for travel and infra.
  And that SPI has been the intermediary of STF and GSoC for us. But we
  do not yet know what the additional money will be used for.
  I dont think many companies will agree to give us 100k/ year with such statement.

This vote would give a clear direction, which we can present to potential
sponsors.

So maybe the vote could be summarized in
Do we want to
    * hire people
    * pay for increased maintaince and development beyond the current capacity

If yes, we need to look for sponsors, if no, we cannot really look for sponsors.

thx

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Homeopathy is like voting while filling the ballot out with transparent ink.
Sometimes the outcome one wanted occurs. Rarely its worse than filling out
a ballot properly.

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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel]

"Yes"
>   We can say, that this extra money will be used to hire people,
>   and for maintaince and development.
>   A Company that depends on FFmpeg has a reason to spend 100k/y here, its
> tiny for
>   many companies, and they make MUCH larger sums with their buisness
> depending on
>   FFmpeg.
>

But what happens when you spread conspiracy theories about said companies
as you have with (included but not limited to), Vimeo and FFlabs?

Do you Michael Niedermayer promise to respect the wishes of the GA and not
spread conspiracy theories?

Or does this project remain an conspiracy theory / paranoia discussion site
that happens to develop multimedia?

Kieran
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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi

On Thu, Oct 02, 2025 at 02:55:16PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> As suggested in the thread with similar subject, here is the vote.
> Please reply with a "Yes" or "No" to cast your vote.
> Vote ends in 7 days. All members of the GA can vote
> 
> 
> "Yes"
>  - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
>  - The money will be used for FFmpeg and the FFmpeg community. (Maintenance, Development, Infra, Testing, Travel, Research, ...)
>  - The money would also be used to hire / employ / contract FFmpeg Contributors fulltime or whatever the preferrance of each Contributor is.
>  - Work / employment shall be preferrentially be given to FFmpeg Developers / FFmpeg community members.
>     This preferrance for "FFmpeg Developers / FFmpeg community members" shall be the only preferrance.
>     Outside that preferrance, a fair selection process shall be used by the General Assembly which
>     only maximizes FFmpegs future.
>  - Goals are
>     * to provide secure full time employment for every major FFmpeg contributor, who wants to have that.
>     * to accelerate growth and improve quality
>  - A fair selection process shall be used by the FFmpeg Community to select what the money is used for, which maximizes FFmpegs future.
>  - The FFmpeg community will be the decission maker about these funds.
>  - The FFmpeg community will, at any time be able to change the process of how these decission are made by public consensus.
>  - In absence of privacy concerns, decissions will be made by public consensus amongth the commuity, or if that fails,
>    public vote of the GA members requireing a 2/3 majority to release funds for some use.
>  - For cases with privacy concerns, decissions will be made by consensus or (2/3 maj) vote amongth the General Assembly.
>  - We will use SPI to collect the funds.
>  - If significant limitations or obstacles occur with SPI then we will consider founding our own FFmpeg foundation.
> 
> "No"
>  - leave things as they are

"Yes", I see no harm in trying to find sponsors and if we find them,
to use the money for FFmpeg


[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Democracy is the form of government in which you can choose your dictator

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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi all

On Thu, Oct 02, 2025 at 02:55:16PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> As suggested in the thread with similar subject, here is the vote.
> Please reply with a "Yes" or "No" to cast your vote.
> Vote ends in 7 days. All members of the GA can vote
> 
> 
> "Yes"
>  - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
>  - The money will be used for FFmpeg and the FFmpeg community. (Maintenance, Development, Infra, Testing, Travel, Research, ...)
>  - The money would also be used to hire / employ / contract FFmpeg Contributors fulltime or whatever the preferrance of each Contributor is.
>  - Work / employment shall be preferrentially be given to FFmpeg Developers / FFmpeg community members.
>     This preferrance for "FFmpeg Developers / FFmpeg community members" shall be the only preferrance.
>     Outside that preferrance, a fair selection process shall be used by the General Assembly which
>     only maximizes FFmpegs future.
>  - Goals are
>     * to provide secure full time employment for every major FFmpeg contributor, who wants to have that.
>     * to accelerate growth and improve quality
>  - A fair selection process shall be used by the FFmpeg Community to select what the money is used for, which maximizes FFmpegs future.
>  - The FFmpeg community will be the decission maker about these funds.
>  - The FFmpeg community will, at any time be able to change the process of how these decission are made by public consensus.
>  - In absence of privacy concerns, decissions will be made by public consensus amongth the commuity, or if that fails,
>    public vote of the GA members requireing a 2/3 majority to release funds for some use.
>  - For cases with privacy concerns, decissions will be made by consensus or (2/3 maj) vote amongth the General Assembly.
>  - We will use SPI to collect the funds.
>  - If significant limitations or obstacles occur with SPI then we will consider founding our own FFmpeg foundation.
> 
> "No"
>  - leave things as they are
> 
> 
> Some Notes:
>     Employing people is complex as it requires compliance to local regulations.
>     Thus it should be expected that for employing developers, we will likely
>     need to work together with local companies. That is if we want to
>     employ someone in Country X we could partner with a company in Country X
>     which then employs the developer and SPI would pay that company.

The number of people voting was a bit disappointing but
the result is an unanimous "Yes"

thx

[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped 
leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded 
you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. - Colin Powell

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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel]

> The number of people voting was a bit disappointing but
> the result is an unanimous "Yes"

unanimous - "if a group of people is unanimous, everyone agrees to something: "
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/unanimous

Number of votes: 1
Number of days since a deranged email on this mailing list: 0

Kieran
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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Ronald S. Bultje via ffmpeg-devel]

Hi Michael,

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 11:01 AM Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel <
ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> The number of people voting was a bit disappointing but


I can't speak for others, but I saw the vote request and didn't find it
very serious.

What I mean with that is: in a regular vote, there's typically two (or
sometimes more) opposing sides (e.g. parties, people, opinions) that both
believe they are the best option in the set of available options. Each side
can argue for its own case and voters can make an informed choice after a
fruitful and informative debate. (I know this is somewhat idealized.)

You covered the "yes" side (something about collecting sponsorship money
into SPI), but nobody made any counter-argument against "yes", e.g. for the
"no" side. Does this mean nobody supported "no" to begin with and it was a
strawman in a vote? Whose "side" was the "no" supposed to cover? Who was
the proponent of the "no", or more generally: who was not on the "yes" side
and was the reason for the need-to-vote?

On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 8:55 AM Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
wrote:

> "No"
>  - leave things as they are


For me, the number of votes is not surprising, since there was nothing to
choose between.

Ronald
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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi Ronald

On Sat, Oct 11, 2025 at 05:05:44PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 11:01 AM Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
> > The number of people voting was a bit disappointing but
> 
> 
> I can't speak for others, but I saw the vote request and didn't find it
> very serious.
> 

> What I mean with that is: in a regular vote, there's typically two (or
> sometimes more) opposing sides (e.g. parties, people, opinions) that both
> believe they are the best option in the set of available options. Each side
> can argue for its own case and voters can make an informed choice after a
> fruitful and informative debate. (I know this is somewhat idealized.)
> 
> You covered the "yes" side (something about collecting sponsorship money
> into SPI), but nobody made any counter-argument against "yes", e.g. for the
> "no" side. Does this mean nobody supported "no" to begin with and it was a
> strawman in a vote? Whose "side" was the "no" supposed to cover? Who was
> the proponent of the "no", or more generally: who was not on the "yes" side
> and was the reason for the need-to-vote?

i asked 3 weeks before the vote for comments
0909 10:19 Michael Niederm (2.6K) [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Sponsors & Funding
and certainly people did take it serious.

The alternative to my proposal was to leave things as they are, thats
the "default". Noone proposed another option, and that should not be an issue because
people could have voted "no" and presented an alternative later.

I would have preferred alot, if there where more votes

But worse is, if we forever have everything stuck. (and i think you actually
agree on that)

and if you read your mail.
You seem not concerned about Funding
You seem not concerned about FFmpegs future
You seem not concerned about teh Team
You seem not concerned about competitors
You seem not concerned about FFmpeg developers we are loosing (because we have no
way to pay them and they dont want or cant be volunteers forever)

It seems you are concerned, that a decission was made, and not even one you seem
to strongly disagree with, so I dont know. Iam a bit confused.

Iam concerned about FFmpegs future if we cannot overcome these internal issues.

I think we should try to regularly chat with each other to better understand
each other. I dont know exactly but what you say sounds like there are
some misunderstandings here.

thx

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Whats the most studid thing your enemy could do ? Blow himself up
Whats the most studid thing you could do ? Give up your rights and
freedom because your enemy blew himself up.


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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [POLL][VOTE] Sponsors & Funding

[Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2025, 11:20 Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel, <
ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> Hi Ronald
>
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2025 at 05:05:44PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje via
> ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> > Hi Michael,
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 11:01 AM Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel <
> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> >
> > > The number of people voting was a bit disappointing but
> >
> >
> > I can't speak for others, but I saw the vote request and didn't find it
> > very serious.
> >
>
> > What I mean with that is: in a regular vote, there's typically two (or
> > sometimes more) opposing sides (e.g. parties, people, opinions) that both
> > believe they are the best option in the set of available options. Each
> side
> > can argue for its own case and voters can make an informed choice after a
> > fruitful and informative debate. (I know this is somewhat idealized.)
> >
> > You covered the "yes" side (something about collecting sponsorship money
> > into SPI), but nobody made any counter-argument against "yes", e.g. for
> the
> > "no" side. Does this mean nobody supported "no" to begin with and it was
> a
> > strawman in a vote? Whose "side" was the "no" supposed to cover? Who was
> > the proponent of the "no", or more generally: who was not on the "yes"
> side
> > and was the reason for the need-to-vote?
>
> i asked 3 weeks before the vote for comments
> 0909 10:19 Michael Niederm (2.6K) [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Sponsors & Funding
> and certainly people did take it serious.
>
> The alternative to my proposal was to leave things as they are, thats
> the "default". Noone proposed another option, and that should not be an
> issue because
> people could have voted "no" and presented an alternative later.
>
> I would have preferred alot, if there where more votes
>
> But worse is, if we forever have everything stuck. (and i think you
> actually
> agree on that)
>
> and if you read your mail.
> You seem not concerned about Funding
> You seem not concerned about FFmpegs future
> You seem not concerned about teh Team
> You seem not concerned about competitors
> You seem not concerned about FFmpeg developers we are loosing (because we
> have no
> way to pay them and they dont want or cant be volunteers forever)
>
> It seems you are concerned, that a decission was made, and not even one
> you seem
> to strongly disagree with, so I dont know. Iam a bit confused.
>
> Iam concerned about FFmpegs future if we cannot overcome these internal
> issues.
>
> I think we should try to regularly chat with each other to better
> understand
> each other. I dont know exactly but what you say sounds like there are
> some misunderstandings here.
>

Have a proper GA vote then.
If you want to rant about why the GA is rigged or whatever, then why is
your single vote in what is clearly a shambolic "vote" worth more than a
proper GA vote?

And now your usual approach of attacking people who disagree with you. (see
SDR, STF etc)

Kieran

>
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