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

[Gyan Doshi via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org>]

On 2025-09-11 02:22 am, Michael Niedermayer via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> 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

What is the 'community' in this scenario? Who are the members (and who 
decides), what is the voting mechanism, who is/are the adjudicators?

Regards,
Gyan

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