[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi Everyone

The subject of funding and sponsors came up a few times recently.

I think FFmpeg needs a clear guideline on this matter. To avoid
confusion, to avoid disagreements and to ensure community members
can point potential sponsors in an aggreed direction without hesitation.

My suggestion would be:
 - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
 - The money would be used for FFmpeg (Maintenance, Development, Infra, Testing, Travel, Research, ...)
 - A fair selection process shall be used by the FFmpeg Community to select what the money is used for, which maximizes FFmpegs future.
 - The money would also be used to hire / employ FFmpeg Developers fulltime or whatever the preferrance of each Developer 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

suggestions ?

should we vote on this and then add it to web or docs ?

thx
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Frequently ignored answer#1 FFmpeg bugs should be sent to our bugtracker. User
questions about the command line tools should be sent to the ffmpeg-user ML.
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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel]

On Tue, 9 Sept 2025, 09:19 Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel, <
ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> Hi Everyone
>
> The subject of funding and sponsors came up a few times recently.
>
> I think FFmpeg needs a clear guideline on this matter. To avoid
> confusion, to avoid disagreements and to ensure community members
> can point potential sponsors in an aggreed direction without hesitation.
>

I don't disagree ffmpeg needs funding.

My suggestion would be:
>  - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
>  - The money would be used for FFmpeg (Maintenance, Development, Infra,
> Testing, Travel, Research, ...)
>  - A fair selection process shall be used by the FFmpeg Community to
> select what the money is used for, which maximizes FFmpegs future.
>  - The money would also be used to hire / employ FFmpeg Developers
> fulltime or whatever the preferrance of each Developer is.
>  - Work / employment shall be preferrentially be given to FFmpeg
> Developers / FFmpeg community members.
>

What work though? Who decides this? Would sponsors really want their funds
going on SDR or game codecs.

    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.
>

A goal without a practical way of getting there. Big companies want their
name associated with a project without insanity (paranoid conspiracy
theories largely coming from one person about people in the project, other
companies, the CIA etc).

Kieran

Kieran

>
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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Rémi Denis-Courmont via ffmpeg-devel]

Hi,

Le 9 septembre 2025 11:19:26 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> a écrit :
>Hi Everyone
>
>The subject of funding and sponsors came up a few times recently.
>
>I think FFmpeg needs a clear guideline on this matter. To avoid
>confusion, to avoid disagreements and to ensure community members
>can point potential sponsors in an aggreed direction without hesitation.

We already went through that before. There are two ways that companies might credibly sponsor an OSS project on a big enough scale to actually hire developers:

1) Developers are hired or contracted independently. This is already happening.

2) A legal entity with clear oversight rules that sponsors can trust and influence collects funding from sponsors and decides whom to pay for what.

AFAIU, several people including you don't want (2), so that's that.

Companies might be willing to sponsor events, hardware, hosting, or just make small donations. They can already do that via SPI. But it is extremely unlikely that they would just give money to the GA, "the community" or whoever Fabrice Bellard happens to trust with FFmpeg.org at a given point in time (currently, you).

And correct if I am wrong but I doubt that the GA members want to handle negotiating compensation, deliverables and deadlines, writing contracts and tracking progress.

To put it another way:
- If you can get sponsored to do maintenance, do it. You don't need to, and shouldn't ask the GA or the community, for anything other than code review.
- If you can't, then you should be pondering why that is, and what can be done about it, not how hypothetical funding should be spent.
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[FFmpeg-devel] SDR debate again Was: Re: [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi Kieran

On Tue, Sep 09, 2025 at 10:02:22AM +0100, Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Sept 2025, 09:19 Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel, <
[...]

> My suggestion would be:
> >  - The FFmpeg project should actively seek sponsors and funding.
> >  - The money would be used for FFmpeg (Maintenance, Development, Infra,
> > Testing, Travel, Research, ...)
> >  - A fair selection process shall be used by the FFmpeg Community to
> > select what the money is used for, which maximizes FFmpegs future.
> >  - The money would also be used to hire / employ FFmpeg Developers
> > fulltime or whatever the preferrance of each Developer is.
> >  - Work / employment shall be preferrentially be given to FFmpeg
> > Developers / FFmpeg community members.
> >
> 
> What work though?

> Who decides this?

The FFmpeg Community, and the General Assembly. I think thats the only
option we have.


> Would sponsors really want their funds
> going on SDR or game codecs.

Lets discuss this in this little subthread, because why not

Had my SDR patch been applied, what would have been different ?
1. a few kilobytes of optional source code that affects noone
   because its disabled by default
2. I would have had 3 months more time to work on FFmpeg, which i spend
   arguing over SDR and subsequently spending also less time on FFmpeg
3. Maybe Paul or Anton would still be in FFmpeg
4. I would not have to go over the whole SDR code again and maintain it
   as a plugin (which will take more time away from FFmpeg)

So what did it achieve to block SDR in main ffmpeg git ? please tell me

And why would a company have the same preferrance ? IMO any
good manager will want their employee to be happy and efficiently working.
Not pissing them off, so in fact i expect support in favor
of SDR by many companies.
Not because they care about SDR, but because they care about me working on
the FFmpeg code and SDR has no cost to them.

thx

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

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your
right to say it. -- Voltaire

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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel]

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Hi Remi

On Tue, Sep 09, 2025 at 02:49:39PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Le 9 septembre 2025 11:19:26 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> a écrit :
> >Hi Everyone
> >
> >The subject of funding and sponsors came up a few times recently.
> >
> >I think FFmpeg needs a clear guideline on this matter. To avoid
> >confusion, to avoid disagreements and to ensure community members
> >can point potential sponsors in an aggreed direction without hesitation.
> 
> We already went through that before. There are two ways that companies might credibly sponsor an OSS project on a big enough scale to actually hire developers:
> 
> 1) Developers are hired or contracted independently. This is already happening.
> 

> 2) A legal entity with clear oversight rules that sponsors can trust and influence collects funding from sponsors and decides whom to pay for what.

We have that:
"Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is a non-profit corporation registered in the state of New York founded to act as a fiscal sponsor for organizations that develop open source software and hardware. Our mission is to help substantial and  significant open source projects by handling their non-technical administrative tasks so that they aren't required to operate their own legal entity."

thx

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

What does censorship reveal? It reveals fear. -- Julian Assange

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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: SDR debate again Was: Re: [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel]

> Lets discuss this in this little subthread, because why not
>
> Had my SDR patch been applied, what would have been different ?
> 1. a few kilobytes of optional source code that affects noone
>    because its disabled by default
> 2. I would have had 3 months more time to work on FFmpeg, which i spend
>    arguing over SDR and subsequently spending also less time on FFmpeg
> 3. Maybe Paul or Anton would still be in FFmpeg
> 4. I would not have to go over the whole SDR code again and maintain it
>    as a plugin (which will take more time away from FFmpeg)
>
> So what did it achieve to block SDR in main ffmpeg git ? please tell me
>
> And why would a company have the same preferrance ? IMO any
> good manager will want their employee to be happy and efficiently working.
> Not pissing them off, so in fact i expect support in favor
> of SDR by many companies.
> Not because they care about SDR, but because they care about me working on
> the FFmpeg code and SDR has no cost to them.

This is completely delusional.

Kieran
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[FFmpeg-devel] Re: [RFC] Sponsors & Funding

[Rémi Denis-Courmont via ffmpeg-devel]

Le tiistaina 9. syyskuuta 2025, 15.10.37 Itä-Euroopan kesäaika Michael 
Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel a écrit :
> > 2) A legal entity with clear oversight rules that sponsors can trust and
> > influence collects funding from sponsors and decides whom to pay for
> > what.
> We have that:
> "Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is a non-profit corporation
> registered in the state of New York founded to act as a fiscal sponsor for
> organizations that develop open source software and hardware. Our mission
> is to help substantial and  significant open source projects by handling
> their non-technical administrative tasks so that they aren't required to
> operate their own legal entity."

How does that enable large sponsors to influence what gets done with the money? 
How does that take care of drafting and reviewing contracts? That just takes 
care of fiscal and admin problems. It's great that they do it at all, but it's 
not remotely sufficient in this context.

There is an argument that sponsors should not be allowed that influence. But 
the flip side is that they won't make big donations without it. It's not a 
sufficient condition, but it's essentially necessary.

AFAICT, you would need an actual FFmpeg legal entity with proper legal 
statutes and formal governance, and as part of that governance, a significant 
place for big sponsors. No offense, but you don't strike me as the type of 
person with the expertise and skillset to do set up and run such an 
organisation (me neither).

So maybe let's not waste time and arguing about hypotheticals. Focus on 
funding that you can likely obtain and don't unnecessarily involve the 
community. It's not that complicated:
- do not claim to represent the whole FFmpeg community, just whoever you are,
- do not force features in on the sole basis of funding and/or contract to 
implement them.
(Generic you aimed at everyone and no one in particular)

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
Hagalund ny stad, f.d. Finska republik Nylands



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