Re: [FFmpeg-devel] Democratization

[Vittorio Giovara <vittorio.giovara@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 12:27 AM Soft Works <
softworkz-at-hotmail.com@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> >
> > If you have reason to believe otherwise, then indeed the situation is
> > more
> > complicated. And then we may have a third faction consisting of some
> > subset of
> > (Michael, Timo, Fabrice, and possibly other people we were not made
> > aware of).
>
>
> You might be on a right track here, because I believe that the common
> assessment as laid out by several supporters of the "community governance
> model" matches reality just partially at best.
>
> The common telling is that there's Michael on one side with a number of
> "his buddies" or "surrogates" and on the other side there's "the community"
> who want the project to be led by "the community" - all in agreement.
>
> But that might be just wishful storytelling, as the situation is more
> complicated indeed.
> None of us have any figures, so we can't know exactly before any vote has
> happened, what I want to point out though, is that this idea of "Michael +
> Buddies" vs. "The Community" doesn't fit in its simplicity.
>

That does not mean it would be worth trying something different. I already
listed the incidents I've just seen happen before my eyes in this mailing
list and these are not fun incidents. Ideally there should be some
guarantee beyond Micheal's word not to repeat them again. What you're
saying is "this is how it has always been, therefore we should just accept
it", which is unfair, especially to the most active contributors.

Once again, you are invited to the fosdem meeting and see for yourself what
the community really wants.

This "community" in its current form and appearance and the way it is
> represented by its members is fundamentally incapable of leading and
> executing control over a project like ffmpeg.
> I'm aware that there are projects where this is working, same as I've seen
> projects where all members are pretty much on the same line and when
> there's a committee with a handful of members, persons leave, other persons
> join, but that doesn't change anything because they all share the same
> ideas and plans and all are working together hand-in-hand.
>

This is like your opinion man.


> But this community - the "ffmpeg community" is a very different case. It
> disqualifies itself as a potential project owner or leader almost on a
> daily basis.
> IMO, this "community" getting control over the project is the worst thing
> that could happen, and no matter which alternatives there would be to vote
> for, I would always vote for these over "community" ownership.
>

we established this point, you posted this way more than 4 times :)


> There are others who are watching this ML from a distance and thinking
> about the same - just silently.
> We don't know figures, but nobody should think it would be a sure thing
> that all "non-buddies" would want and vote for a community ownership.
>

Including people who would like to join the community but are horrified by
how things are. And it's 2025, nobody will join a project where the leader
can ban at will, hussle sponsors, and support conspiracy theorists, despite
the name.


> Further, many developers here are working for the industry in one or
> another form, and what businesses want is stability and predictability -
> not a community where majorities might be volatile and it can quickly
> happen that strategically important code is thrown out of ffmpeg by vote
> from a group of ideologists who managed to gain an intermittent majority.
>

Bold of you to imply that Micheal's decision are anything but stable ;)
Having a well established process is way more predictable than someone
using AI to write emails.


> Finally, there are also contributors who don't care about community,
> membership or influence - they just want to get their code merged without
> trouble. Will they vote for a community governance where every little nit
> from someone will require to conduct a vote on it?
>

Another "what if" of an unlikely scenario - it's already like this, in the
unlikely case of conflict we have a TC that does what you describe when
needed.
I'm sure you understand 5 people have an easier time managing a case than
the whole community.
-- 
Vittorio
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