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

[Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org>]

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Hi Kieran

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 06:21:56PM +0200, Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Sept 2025, 17:49 Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel, <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
> > Hi remi
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 09, 2025 at 07:29:02PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont via
> > ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > With souvereign tech fund we had contracts between people, STF and SPI.
> >
> > SPI did provide for the legal, accounting and paperwork services here.
> > We should in fact donate to them for doing that for us. (if we did not yet)
> >
> 
> SPI is not accountable to the GA.

Lets go down that rabbit hole.

For this subject to make any sense, we need to have the entities
(GA, the community, myself, stefano) disagree.

I have to point out, that stefano and myself just pass the community
decissions to SPI, so we will not disagree with the community.

But let us for sake of this rabbit hole, assume, we all disagree.

I say: green
Stefano says: red
The community says: blue with 90% majority
The GA says: black with 90% majority

So what will SPI do ?
IMHO, SPI will see me and stefano disagree and consequently will check the
public communication channels and see that the community in public and
in a verifyable way has choosen: blue

I do belive that in this case SPI will go with the FFmpeg communities decission.
SPI is there to support open source communities, not to support me.

I also think many people would in this case investigate where the difference
between the GA and community came from. And really this almost certainly
would have to imply a governance attack based on the membership critera of the GA

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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