Re: [FFmpeg-devel] Democratization work in progress draft v2

[Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>]

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Hi Niklas

On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 12:43:13AM +0100, Niklas Haas wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Jan 2025 21:33:21 +0100 Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> wrote:
> > Hi all
> > 
> > Heres my current "work in progress": (sending that before fosdem, so people can discuss if they like)
> > 
> > Goals:
> >     The proposed changes aim to improve the General Assembly's structure to ensure inclusivity, fairness, and resilience against attacks. The key goals are as follows:
> >     Increase the Size of the General Assembly
> >         Inclusivity: Allow every contributor to have a vote, ensuring all voices are heard, regardless of their role or level of involvement.
> >         Enhanced Security: By increasing the number of voters, it becomes significantly harder for a malicious actor or group to influence decisions. A larger voting pool dilutes the impact of any single attack or coordinated effort.
> >     Make Voting Power Proportional to Contributions
> >         Fair Representation: Allocate voting power based on contributions, ensuring that those who dedicate substantial time and effort to the project have a stronger voice than those with minimal involvement. This creates a system where contribution equals influence.
> 
> This should be time-gated to count only commits in the recent, say, 3 years (to
> match the current GA cycle). Counting purely historical commits seems odd.

Later in this text there is:
> > A factor related to last activity will be in a seperate vote


> 
> To use a loose analogy to a real-world democracy, it's like suggesting that
> retirees should have more votes than young adults because they've lived in a
> country for longer. This is a non sequitur - in reality, it should be, if
> anything, the exact other way around. Those with a stake in the project's
> present and future deserve more say than those with a stake purely in its past.

If instead of a hypothetical case, you use real cases
like for example any successfull company (not just on the stock market but that too)
(obviously we skip unsuccessfull companies)

Then we can see that the founders, and people that build the company up from near 0
and worked their whole life on it, made the right decissions early on to make the
company what it became often have a larger number of shares and thus vote power.

This method has been tested in the commercial world and it works.
But maybe someone has tried throwing all sharholders out and giving the
shares to only the recently active employees. Personally i think that would
most of the time end badly ...
(again iam using the example of a commercial company here because it has a
 clear way to judge success. I dont like the comparission either, FFmpeg is not
 a commercial entity and it will not become one)

A project that makes the wrong decissions fails. A project that makes the right
decissions the people making these decissions should be rewarded with more vote
power. FFmpeg under the GA has done poorly, there was no growth for example and
we had increasing infighting. So the idea that all power should rest only on that
group seems simply the wrong choice for FFmpeg to me. I think we should try
something else. Whatever is better is the new local minima and we keep trying
until we cannot improve anymore. Like trying to find the best motion vector
in motion estimation. Try good vectors from surroundings, then iterate with
smaller steps until optimum is found.

The GA system was tried for several years, IMO lets try something else
be that a Flat or Proportional system that includes the whole community.
Then try the other of the 2.

If everything fails we can also try a
benevolent Dictator model again. But for that really it requires the
community to want that, iam not interrested in this with a 51% majority
behind me. It would need a much stronger majority like 70+%

Also my proposal contained "Shares in Alternative F"
where everyone has a equal share (F for flat)

In the flat system i would have 1 vote in thousands. But also everyone else
would only have 1 vote.


thx

[...]
-- 
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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