[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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Hi all

Many developers no longer live with their parents.
The subject of financial sustainability has come up many times and also
increasingly each year

This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.

1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
2. We should activly seek more donations for SPI-FFmpeg

To help 2. we should favor flashy, cool development that can bring in more
donations

How much we can fund with donations over SPI is hard to predict ...
So what can you do ?

* If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
  between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
  some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
  try this, there will be extra issues likely. And once the community approves
  it and stefano with you double checks with SPI if we will be able to fund it.
  Then you can start working on it

* Propose some news entry for our homepage, some tweet, anything else that is
  intended to increase awareness of the possibility, use and need of donations

If you do neither, then dont complain about money. SPI atm is a bit a chicken
and egg problem. Theres not that much money in SPI so people are hestitant to
ask for any. And as we dont use most the money theres no need to ask for more
or companies (or people) to donate more.

Break the cycle and do something! <------

Thanks
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

"You are 36 times more likely to die in a bathtub than at the hands of a
terrorist. Also, you are 2.5 times more likely to become a president and
2 times more likely to become an astronaut, than to die in a terrorist
attack." -- Thoughty2


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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Kieran Kunhya]

>
> * If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>   between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready
> for
>   some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first
> time we
>   try this, there will be extra issues likely. And once the community
> approves
>   it and stefano with you double checks with SPI if we will be able to
> fund it.
>   Then you can start working on it
>

The mailing list is already an absolute disaster as it is and you now want
to put money into the mix?
I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.

Kieran
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Am 26.10.23 um 21:02 schrieb Kieran Kunhya:
>>
>> * If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>>    between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready
>> for
>>    some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first
>> time we
>>    try this, there will be extra issues likely. And once the community
>> approves
>>    it and stefano with you double checks with SPI if we will be able to
>> fund it.
>>    Then you can start working on it
>>
> 
> The mailing list is already an absolute disaster as it is and you now want
> to put money into the mix?

Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there and 
already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for needs to 
be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch it 
growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an assumption 
without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than not 
having even tried.

Also, you just advertised FFmpeg and asked for more financial support in your 
talk at Demuxed [1] - so I figure your prefered way of doing that would be to 
channel money into some company without the community being involved?

And since you also advertised explicitly for FFlabs - what is your relation to 
FFlabs? I own 25% of that company and I am not aware of any relationship. You 
just did advertise FFlabs because... FFlabs exists? FFlabs is a company co-owned 
by some FFmpeg developers, it's not FFmpeg nor can it represent it or act on its 
behalf.

As soon as we pay developers via SPI it can become a good zero-trust environment 
for donators to offer tasks & money to FFmpeg and handle the money flow via SPI.
The donators can be sure that their issues are handled properly in the project 
(on the ML) and do not flow away into some other sink and the developers can be 
sure to get their money from SPI because the offer is public and backed by the 
FFmpeg SPI account. Sounds like a quite trustworthy and most importantyl 
transparent way to handle things and build up trust in potential donators that 
the money they spent actually end up with FFmpeg.


> I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.

I think supporting FFmpeg developers via SPI fits perfectly into what we have 
SPI for in the first place - an independant entity that handles the community 
funds with absolute objectivity and no intrinsic interest whatsoever. In 
contrast to any company, including (my own-ish) FFlabs.

-Thilo

[1] 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B9VoiT6sjW4vWWsp6ipudLz73QtdBbGi/view?usp=sharing
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Kieran Kunhya]

Hi,

On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 12:41, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there
> and
> already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for
> needs to
> be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch it
> growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an
> assumption
> without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than
> not
> having even tried.
>

Reimbursement requests for clearly defined things like travel costs with
receipts, or hardware that the project owns is in no way comparable to
consulting work, contracts, statements of work etc. And the current swscale
proposal is far from this too.


> Also, you just advertised FFmpeg and asked for more financial support in
> your
> talk at Demuxed [1] - so I figure your prefered way of doing that would be
> to
> channel money into some company without the community being involved?
>

Actually if you watched the presentation, I said big companies need to
support maintenance (not the same as bounties) of FFmpeg by hiring
employees to work full time as they do with Linux Kernel maintainers. Or
failing that they can donate to the community - but as you know well the
numbers we have are not enough to hire full time maintainers.

Agreement via mailing list for money is a recipe for disaster. What we need
are clear statements of work that are voted on by TC.
We can't even agree on patch reviews, throwing money into the mix is
throwing gasoline into the fire.

And since you also advertised explicitly for FFlabs - what is your relation
> to
> FFlabs? I own 25% of that company and I am not aware of any relationship.
> You
> just did advertise FFlabs because... FFlabs exists? FFlabs is a company
> co-owned
> by some FFmpeg developers, it's not FFmpeg nor can it represent it or act
> on its
> behalf.
>

I linked to the consulting page and also to FFlabs which as far as I know
is the only company offering an SLA on FFmpeg.
If others existed I would have included them.


> As soon as we pay developers via SPI it can become a good zero-trust
> environment
> for donators to offer tasks & money to FFmpeg and handle the money flow
> via SPI.
> The donators can be sure that their issues are handled properly in the
> project
> (on the ML) and do not flow away into some other sink and the developers
> can be
> sure to get their money from SPI because the offer is public and backed by
> the
> FFmpeg SPI account. Sounds like a quite trustworthy and most importantyl
> transparent way to handle things and build up trust in potential donators
> that
> the money they spent actually end up with FFmpeg.
>

Do you really think the way SPI funding is managed currently matches your
description?
Stefano approves by saying "Approved on my side, pending Michael's
approval."
This is not at all a community driven process where one person can veto
everything.

> I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.
>
> I think supporting FFmpeg developers via SPI fits perfectly into what we
> have
> SPI for in the first place - an independant entity that handles the
> community
> funds with absolute objectivity and no intrinsic interest whatsoever. In
> contrast to any company, including (my own-ish) FFlabs.
>

If there is disagreement (which will be inevitable) SPI will not step in.
Money is only going to make our current ML drama situation worse.

Regards,
Kieran Kunhya
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Am 27.10.23 um 03:28 schrieb Kieran Kunhya:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 12:41, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
>> Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there
>> and
>> already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for
>> needs to
>> be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch it
>> growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an
>> assumption
>> without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than
>> not
>> having even tried.
>>
> 
> Reimbursement requests for clearly defined things like travel costs with
> receipts, or hardware that the project owns is in no way comparable to
> consulting work, contracts, statements of work etc. And the current swscale
> proposal is far from this too.

Yes, of course they are different. Most importantly sponsored development needs 
to be agreed upon beforehand. That does not imply sponsored work is not clearly 
defined. I miss your argument about why it can't be done in this.


>> Also, you just advertised FFmpeg and asked for more financial support in
>> your
>> talk at Demuxed [1] - so I figure your prefered way of doing that would be
>> to
>> channel money into some company without the community being involved?
>>
> 
> Actually if you watched the presentation, I said big companies need to
> support maintenance (not the same as bounties) of FFmpeg by hiring
> employees to work full time as they do with Linux Kernel maintainers. Or
> failing that they can donate to the community - but as you know well the
> numbers we have are not enough to hire full time maintainers.

I'm totally fine with you asking big companies to hire devs for FFmpeg 
maintenance. That does not relate to my question, though. Do I assume correctly 
that your prefered way of doing that would be to channel money into some company 
without the community being involved?


> Agreement via mailing list for money is a recipe for disaster. What we need
> are clear statements of work that are voted on by TC.

That's not the purpose of the TC. We of course need to have a good way of 
approving or disapproving proposals and of course we need these to be clearly 
defined. I again miss to see your argument why that shall not be possible on the 
ML - everyone on this list knows where your suspicion comes from but again, 
without even having tried, it's just your assumption and should IMHO not 
stopping us from trying to implement such a procedure.


> We can't even agree on patch reviews, throwing money into the mix is
> throwing gasoline into the fire.

Being in conflict about a patch is completely different to conflict about some 
feature we might want. And no, not everything is as controversial as SDR or gets 
controversial just because it would be sponsored. You think there would have 
been real and non-resolvable opposition against bringing multi-threading into 
ffmpeg.c? You assume a proposed sponsored AV2 decoder will raise such opposition?
However, since I agree with you that there will be different oppinions, why 
would you think that a e.g. a vote/committee or whatever we will choose could 
not resolve how we deal with these cases?


> And since you also advertised explicitly for FFlabs - what is your relation
>> to
>> FFlabs? I own 25% of that company and I am not aware of any relationship.
>> You
>> just did advertise FFlabs because... FFlabs exists? FFlabs is a company
>> co-owned
>> by some FFmpeg developers, it's not FFmpeg nor can it represent it or act
>> on its
>> behalf.
>>
> 
> I linked to the consulting page and also to FFlabs which as far as I know
> is the only company offering an SLA on FFmpeg.
> If others existed I would have included them.

Nothing wrong about bringing attention to ff.org/consulting or FFlabs.
My question is what your relationship with FFlabs is?


>> As soon as we pay developers via SPI it can become a good zero-trust
>> environment
>> for donators to offer tasks & money to FFmpeg and handle the money flow
>> via SPI.
>> The donators can be sure that their issues are handled properly in the
>> project
>> (on the ML) and do not flow away into some other sink and the developers
>> can be
>> sure to get their money from SPI because the offer is public and backed by
>> the
>> FFmpeg SPI account. Sounds like a quite trustworthy and most importantyl
>> transparent way to handle things and build up trust in potential donators
>> that
>> the money they spent actually end up with FFmpeg.
>>
> 
> Do you really think the way SPI funding is managed currently matches your
> description?

That's exactly the point, to find a procedure that works for sponsored work.


> Stefano approves by saying "Approved on my side, pending Michael's
> approval."

That won't change because SPI demands it. Done. We can change the names Stefano 
and Michael into whatever, but that's it.

 > This is not at all a community driven process where one person can veto
 > everything.

What needs to be setup, is a procedure to find FFmpeg's decision about it.
Who transports it to and approves it towards SPI is completely uninmportant 
because it cannot be done against the will of FFmpeg - and yes, SPI checks.
Also blocking by a single individual cannot be done already, doesn't even matter 
if it's Michael or Stefano.


>> I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.
>>
>> I think supporting FFmpeg developers via SPI fits perfectly into what we
>> have
>> SPI for in the first place - an independant entity that handles the
>> community
>> funds with absolute objectivity and no intrinsic interest whatsoever. In
>> contrast to any company, including (my own-ish) FFlabs.
>>
> 
> If there is disagreement (which will be inevitable) SPI will not step in.

Only if non-resolvable. If we setup a procedure, that is solved.


> Money is only going to make our current ML drama situation worse.

Circling again. I think everyone long enough on this list agrees with you that 
we have drama potential on almost everything here. However, CC & TC 
instanciation proved that we have a way of putting an end to the drama.

So why don't you want to give it a try at least?

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Kieran Kunhya]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2023 at 03:23, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> Am 27.10.23 um 03:28 schrieb Kieran Kunhya:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 12:41, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there
> >> and
> >> already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for
> >> needs to
> >> be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch
> it
> >> growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an
> >> assumption
> >> without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than
> >> not
> >> having even tried.
> >>
> >
> > Reimbursement requests for clearly defined things like travel costs with
> > receipts, or hardware that the project owns is in no way comparable to
> > consulting work, contracts, statements of work etc. And the current
> swscale
> > proposal is far from this too.
>
> Yes, of course they are different. Most importantly sponsored development
> needs
> to be agreed upon beforehand. That does not imply sponsored work is not
> clearly
> defined. I miss your argument about why it can't be done in this.
>

Do you seriously think this project will have a sudden outbreak of
professionalism and suddenly start producing detailed contracts and
statements of work?
It'll end up being a few lines on the mailing list.

>> Also, you just advertised FFmpeg and asked for more financial support in
> >> your
> >> talk at Demuxed [1] - so I figure your prefered way of doing that would
> be
> >> to
> >> channel money into some company without the community being involved?
> >>
> >
> > Actually if you watched the presentation, I said big companies need to
> > support maintenance (not the same as bounties) of FFmpeg by hiring
> > employees to work full time as they do with Linux Kernel maintainers. Or
> > failing that they can donate to the community - but as you know well the
> > numbers we have are not enough to hire full time maintainers.
>
> I'm totally fine with you asking big companies to hire devs for FFmpeg
> maintenance. That does not relate to my question, though. Do I assume
> correctly
> that your prefered way of doing that would be to channel money into some
> company
> without the community being involved?
>

Contractually yes, this is a better solution. It allows the company to be
in charge of delivery of the maintenance work with a contract behind it.
Do you seriously think big companies will suddenly hand over money to the
community that's got weekly drama around it?
This point was raised to me by a big company that shall remain nameless at
Demuxed.

> Agreement via mailing list for money is a recipe for disaster. What we
> need
> > are clear statements of work that are voted on by TC.
>
> That's not the purpose of the TC. We of course need to have a good way of
> approving or disapproving proposals and of course we need these to be
> clearly
> defined. I again miss to see your argument why that shall not be possible
> on the
> ML - everyone on this list knows where your suspicion comes from but
> again,
> without even having tried, it's just your assumption and should IMHO not
> stopping us from trying to implement such a procedure.
>

The mailing list isn't the be all and end all of all communications and
decision making in the world. History shows it's atrocious for making
decisions.
Many people make valid and succinct points that are outright ignored,
whoever writes the longest wall of text (often with conspiratorial
ramblings that I'm sure go down well with potential donors) seems to get
the most attention (i.e quantity vs quality).

Lots of people have left the project (e.g Derek) because of the toxicity of
this mailing list. Even the Linux Kernel realised their mailing list was
toxic and changed.


> > We can't even agree on patch reviews, throwing money into the mix is
> > throwing gasoline into the fire.
>
> Being in conflict about a patch is completely different to conflict about
> some
> feature we might want. And no, not everything is as controversial as SDR
> or gets
> controversial just because it would be sponsored. You think there would
> have
> been real and non-resolvable opposition against bringing multi-threading
> into
> ffmpeg.c? You assume a proposed sponsored AV2 decoder will raise such
> opposition?
> However, since I agree with you that there will be different oppinions,
> why
> would you think that a e.g. a vote/committee or whatever we will choose
> could
> not resolve how we deal with these cases?
>

A conflict over a patch would lead to lack of payment which would enflame
the situation more.
I don't see why this is difficult to understand.

Yes, I would say a proposed AV2 decoder would be a bad idea since it would
be better to build one on top of dav1d.
AV2 will likely have a lot of similarities to AV1.

The introduction of money into the voting process isn't exactly a great
idea.

> And since you also advertised explicitly for FFlabs - what is your
> relation
> >> to
> >> FFlabs? I own 25% of that company and I am not aware of any
> relationship.
> >> You
> >> just did advertise FFlabs because... FFlabs exists? FFlabs is a company
> >> co-owned
> >> by some FFmpeg developers, it's not FFmpeg nor can it represent it or
> act
> >> on its
> >> behalf.
> >>
> >
> > I linked to the consulting page and also to FFlabs which as far as I know
> > is the only company offering an SLA on FFmpeg.
> > If others existed I would have included them.
>
> Nothing wrong about bringing attention to ff.org/consulting or FFlabs.
> My question is what your relationship with FFlabs is?
>

Since you say you are a shareholder, I don't understand the need for this
performative and insulting question you obviously know the answer to.
Like I said, if Collabora or Igalia or Redhat or provided an SLA for FFmpeg
I would have included them.


> >> As soon as we pay developers via SPI it can become a good zero-trust
> >> environment
> >> for donators to offer tasks & money to FFmpeg and handle the money flow
> >> via SPI.
> >> The donators can be sure that their issues are handled properly in the
> >> project
> >> (on the ML) and do not flow away into some other sink and the developers
> >> can be
> >> sure to get their money from SPI because the offer is public and backed
> by
> >> the
> >> FFmpeg SPI account. Sounds like a quite trustworthy and most importantyl
> >> transparent way to handle things and build up trust in potential
> donators
> >> that
> >> the money they spent actually end up with FFmpeg.
> >>
> >
> > Do you really think the way SPI funding is managed currently matches your
> > description?
>
> That's exactly the point, to find a procedure that works for sponsored
> work.
>
>
> > Stefano approves by saying "Approved on my side, pending Michael's
> > approval."
>
> That won't change because SPI demands it. Done. We can change the names
> Stefano
> and Michael into whatever, but that's it.
>

Ok, so you agree it's not actually community driven?


>  > This is not at all a community driven process where one person can veto
>  > everything.
>
> What needs to be setup, is a procedure to find FFmpeg's decision about it.
> Who transports it to and approves it towards SPI is completely
> uninmportant
> because it cannot be done against the will of FFmpeg - and yes, SPI checks.
> Also blocking by a single individual cannot be done already, doesn't even
> matter
> if it's Michael or Stefano.
>

I am not able to parse this paragraph.


> >> I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.
> >>
> >> I think supporting FFmpeg developers via SPI fits perfectly into what we
> >> have
> >> SPI for in the first place - an independant entity that handles the
> >> community
> >> funds with absolute objectivity and no intrinsic interest whatsoever. In
> >> contrast to any company, including (my own-ish) FFlabs.
> >>
> >
> > If there is disagreement (which will be inevitable) SPI will not step in.
>
> Only if non-resolvable. If we setup a procedure, that is solved.
>

There are a million more important things that don't have a procedure right
now.


> > Money is only going to make our current ML drama situation worse.
>
> Circling again. I think everyone long enough on this list agrees with you
> that
> we have drama potential on almost everything here. However, CC & TC
> instanciation proved that we have a way of putting an end to the drama.
>

We haven't even managed to elect a new TC to even make a decision on
anything.


> So why don't you want to give it a try at least?
>

Because it's clearly going to make a bad situation worse.

Regards,
Kieran Kunhya
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Am 27.10.23 um 15:38 schrieb Kieran Kunhya:
> On Fri, 27 Oct 2023 at 03:23, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
>> Am 27.10.23 um 03:28 schrieb Kieran Kunhya:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 12:41, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
>>> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there
>>>> and
>>>> already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for
>>>> needs to
>>>> be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch
>> it
>>>> growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an
>>>> assumption
>>>> without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than
>>>> not
>>>> having even tried.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Reimbursement requests for clearly defined things like travel costs with
>>> receipts, or hardware that the project owns is in no way comparable to
>>> consulting work, contracts, statements of work etc. And the current
>> swscale
>>> proposal is far from this too.
>>
>> Yes, of course they are different. Most importantly sponsored development
>> needs
>> to be agreed upon beforehand. That does not imply sponsored work is not
>> clearly
>> defined. I miss your argument about why it can't be done in this.
>>
> 
> Do you seriously think this project will have a sudden outbreak of
> professionalism and suddenly start producing detailed contracts and
> statements of work?

The current level appear appealing enough to try and see.


> It'll end up being a few lines on the mailing list.

Just your pessimistic assumption.


>>> Also, you just advertised FFmpeg and asked for more financial support in
>>>> your
>>>> talk at Demuxed [1] - so I figure your prefered way of doing that would
>> be
>>>> to
>>>> channel money into some company without the community being involved?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually if you watched the presentation, I said big companies need to
>>> support maintenance (not the same as bounties) of FFmpeg by hiring
>>> employees to work full time as they do with Linux Kernel maintainers. Or
>>> failing that they can donate to the community - but as you know well the
>>> numbers we have are not enough to hire full time maintainers.
>>
>> I'm totally fine with you asking big companies to hire devs for FFmpeg
>> maintenance. That does not relate to my question, though. Do I assume
>> correctly
>> that your prefered way of doing that would be to channel money into some
>> company
>> without the community being involved?
>>
> 
> Contractually yes, this is a better solution. It allows the company to be
> in charge of delivery of the maintenance work with a contract behind it.
> Do you seriously think big companies will suddenly hand over money to the
> community that's got weekly drama around it?
> This point was raised to me by a big company that shall remain nameless at
> Demuxed.

There is no need for a company to put money in before they are happy with the 
community response. If there is no history of such a procedure, uncertainty will 
remain. Just another reason to try implementing it.
And companies not liking the procedure in general have several other options left.


>> Agreement via mailing list for money is a recipe for disaster. What we
>> need
>>> are clear statements of work that are voted on by TC.
>>
>> That's not the purpose of the TC. We of course need to have a good way of
>> approving or disapproving proposals and of course we need these to be
>> clearly
>> defined. I again miss to see your argument why that shall not be possible
>> on the
>> ML - everyone on this list knows where your suspicion comes from but
>> again,
>> without even having tried, it's just your assumption and should IMHO not
>> stopping us from trying to implement such a procedure.
>>
> 
> The mailing list isn't the be all and end all of all communications and
> decision making in the world. History shows it's atrocious for making
> decisions.
> Many people make valid and succinct points that are outright ignored,
> whoever writes the longest wall of text (often with conspiratorial
> ramblings that I'm sure go down well with potential donors) seems to get
> the most attention (i.e quantity vs quality).

Don't blame mailing lists. It's just the tool we currently use, if we switch to 
s.th. else, than it is that. The problem will always exist no matter the tool - 
except you want no public access to it. The point is that it goes over FFmpeg's 
channel of communication where all project-wide things are discussed and 
eventually decided.


> Lots of people have left the project (e.g Derek) because of the toxicity of
> this mailing list. Even the Linux Kernel realised their mailing list was
> toxic and changed.

It's again not the mailing list why they left, but the toxic behaviour from 
people using it. Nothing changes in that regard, no matter the tool.


>>> We can't even agree on patch reviews, throwing money into the mix is
>>> throwing gasoline into the fire.
>>
>> Being in conflict about a patch is completely different to conflict about
>> some
>> feature we might want. And no, not everything is as controversial as SDR
>> or gets
>> controversial just because it would be sponsored. You think there would
>> have
>> been real and non-resolvable opposition against bringing multi-threading
>> into
>> ffmpeg.c? You assume a proposed sponsored AV2 decoder will raise such
>> opposition?
>> However, since I agree with you that there will be different oppinions,
>> why
>> would you think that a e.g. a vote/committee or whatever we will choose
>> could
>> not resolve how we deal with these cases?
>>
> 
> A conflict over a patch would lead to lack of payment which would enflame
> the situation more.
> I don't see why this is difficult to understand.

The same is true for any coorporate approach if the patch is meant and payed for 
to land in FFmpeg master.


> Yes, I would say a proposed AV2 decoder would be a bad idea since it would
> be better to build one on top of dav1d.
> AV2 will likely have a lot of similarities to AV1.

Maybe not the best example then but I see no point regarding the discussion.


> The introduction of money into the voting process isn't exactly a great
> idea.

And why is that? How else do you want this community to decide about its money 
if it doesn't happen by a vote?


>> And since you also advertised explicitly for FFlabs - what is your
>> relation
>>>> to
>>>> FFlabs? I own 25% of that company and I am not aware of any
>> relationship.
>>>> You
>>>> just did advertise FFlabs because... FFlabs exists? FFlabs is a company
>>>> co-owned
>>>> by some FFmpeg developers, it's not FFmpeg nor can it represent it or
>> act
>>>> on its
>>>> behalf.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I linked to the consulting page and also to FFlabs which as far as I know
>>> is the only company offering an SLA on FFmpeg.
>>> If others existed I would have included them.
>>
>> Nothing wrong about bringing attention to ff.org/consulting or FFlabs.
>> My question is what your relationship with FFlabs is?
>>
> 
> Since you say you are a shareholder, I don't understand the need for this
> performative and insulting question you obviously know the answer to.

I don't see why you receive this as insulting. Feel free to ignore.


> Like I said, if Collabora or Igalia or Redhat or provided an SLA for FFmpeg
> I would have included them.

I neither blame you for just listing FFlabs nor not listing anything else.
That is not why I asked about your FFlabs relationship.


>>>> As soon as we pay developers via SPI it can become a good zero-trust
>>>> environment
>>>> for donators to offer tasks & money to FFmpeg and handle the money flow
>>>> via SPI.
>>>> The donators can be sure that their issues are handled properly in the
>>>> project
>>>> (on the ML) and do not flow away into some other sink and the developers
>>>> can be
>>>> sure to get their money from SPI because the offer is public and backed
>> by
>>>> the
>>>> FFmpeg SPI account. Sounds like a quite trustworthy and most importantyl
>>>> transparent way to handle things and build up trust in potential
>> donators
>>>> that
>>>> the money they spent actually end up with FFmpeg.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Do you really think the way SPI funding is managed currently matches your
>>> description?
>>
>> That's exactly the point, to find a procedure that works for sponsored
>> work.
>>
>>
>>> Stefano approves by saying "Approved on my side, pending Michael's
>>> approval."
>>
>> That won't change because SPI demands it. Done. We can change the names
>> Stefano
>> and Michael into whatever, but that's it.
>>
> 
> Ok, so you agree it's not actually community driven?

No, it is community driven.


>>   > This is not at all a community driven process where one person can veto
>>   > everything.
>>
>> What needs to be setup, is a procedure to find FFmpeg's decision about it.
>> Who transports it to and approves it towards SPI is completely
>> uninmportant
>> because it cannot be done against the will of FFmpeg - and yes, SPI checks.
>> Also blocking by a single individual cannot be done already, doesn't even
>> matter
>> if it's Michael or Stefano.
>>
> 
> I am not able to parse this paragraph.

Not a single person can veto everything.
Not a single person can approve everything.


>>>> I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.
>>>>
>>>> I think supporting FFmpeg developers via SPI fits perfectly into what we
>>>> have
>>>> SPI for in the first place - an independant entity that handles the
>>>> community
>>>> funds with absolute objectivity and no intrinsic interest whatsoever. In
>>>> contrast to any company, including (my own-ish) FFlabs.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If there is disagreement (which will be inevitable) SPI will not step in.
>>
>> Only if non-resolvable. If we setup a procedure, that is solved.
>>
> 
> There are a million more important things that don't have a procedure right
> now.

These million other things are irrelevant for this discussion.
Some thing's missing procedures is no argument for not creating the procedures 
for another thing.


>>> Money is only going to make our current ML drama situation worse.
>>
>> Circling again. I think everyone long enough on this list agrees with you
>> that
>> we have drama potential on almost everything here. However, CC & TC
>> instanciation proved that we have a way of putting an end to the drama.
>>
> 
> We haven't even managed to elect a new TC to even make a decision on
> anything.

The same as above. Not managing some thing is no reason not to manage another thing.


>> So why don't you want to give it a try at least?
>>
> 
> Because it's clearly going to make a bad situation worse.

I don't agree. And you have no argument why nor history to point to, it is your 
opinion that the behaviour will, as you say, clearly get worse.

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le perjantaina 27. lokakuuta 2023, 18.08.54 EEST Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-
devel a écrit :
> > Do you seriously think this project will have a sudden outbreak of
> > professionalism and suddenly start producing detailed contracts and
> > statements of work?
> 
> The current level appear appealing enough to try and see.

So I have been working in 3 different large tech multinationals in the past two 
decades, and recently I have been in the technical role on the purchasing end.

And I can only agree with Kieran. What I have seen so far is exactly that:

> > It'll end up being a few lines on the mailing list.

> Just your pessimistic assumption.

You can call it pessimistic. But it is not realistic to expect people here to 
even bother to write or review a proper statement of work. This is really 
tedious and boring. And that's not even going into the obvious risk of 
bikesheding or flamewar if people do actually decide to participate in the 
drafting or reviewing.
 
Now if SPI had 1M$ in the bank for FFmpeg, then I admit that it could make 
sense to just bite the bullet and go through that tedious process. But it does 
not, it does not look like it will have any time soon.

Frankly, if you and Michael want to pitch that approach, I would advise 
against it, but you have every rights to do so anyway (and I hope nobody here 
actively undermines you). However, also hope that the GA would reject spending 
what little SPI money has for the wishful thinking that it would kickstart 
sustainable financing for FFmpeg development.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2212 bytes --]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 06:28:25PM -0700, Kieran Kunhya wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 12:41, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
> > Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there
> > and
> > already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for
> > needs to
> > be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch it
> > growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an
> > assumption
> > without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than
> > not
> > having even tried.
> >
> 
> Reimbursement requests for clearly defined things like travel costs with
> receipts, or hardware that the project owns is in no way comparable to
> consulting work, contracts, statements of work etc. And the current swscale
> proposal is far from this too.
[...]
> Agreement via mailing list for money is a recipe for disaster. What we need
> are clear statements of work that are voted on by TC.
> We can't even agree on patch reviews, throwing money into the mix is
> throwing gasoline into the fire.

GSoC pays about 5000USD for each individual over the summer. The proposals
for such projects where discussed and agreed upon with very little if any
disagreement. We needed no formal votes, we needed no comittees

and also for patches, you can pick out the 10 most controversal ones in a year
and these are highly vissible, but there are thousands that are reviewed
and applied by consensus with noone objecting.

You seem to pick the most controversal things as reference, and argue that
it cant work. 1 of a 100 patches got stuck in fights so 90 of 100 funding
proposals would get stuck ?

Now we still have no proposals for SPI money, but assume we do.
either we all agree or theres someone who publically objects, in the later
case we will first try to reach an agreement if that fails. We can vote,
its not a big deal.

thx

[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

If you think the mosad wants you dead since a long time then you are either
wrong or dead since a long time.

[-- Attachment #1.2: signature.asc --]
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[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 251 bytes --]

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
>ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
>use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
>the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.

>1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money

Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
- via FFlabs or any other reputable OSS multimedia consulting company,
- a consortium of large companies, or
- directly to a salaried or freelance developer.

It seems the sole benefit is that SPI can solicit donations. So then you are putting the cart before the horses. Secure that extra funding first.

>To help 2. we should favor flashy, cool development that can bring in more
>donations

That's the part that you'd need to clarify first. What relevant flashy cool development will attract those donations? Why should they be funded by donations rather than more traditional business transactions?

>* If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>  between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
>  some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
>  try this, there will be extra issues likely.

I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Hi,

Am 27.10.23 um 12:43 schrieb Rémi Denis-Courmont:
> 
> 
> Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>> This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
>> ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
>> use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
>> the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
> 
>> 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
> 
> Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:

obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by the 
options you list.

> - via FFlabs or any other reputable OSS multimedia consulting company,
> - a consortium of large companies, or
> - directly to a salaried or freelance developer.

Also, it is not that these shall cease to be done. Using SPI money is one more 
option.


> It seems the sole benefit is that SPI can solicit donations. So then you are putting the cart before the horses. Secure that extra funding first.
> 
>> To help 2. we should favor flashy, cool development that can bring in more
>> donations
> 
> That's the part that you'd need to clarify first. What relevant flashy cool development will attract those donations? Why should they be funded by donations rather than more traditional business transactions?

Hen & egg. Fortunately, as Michael suggests, we have a starting budget already 
and 5-10 K seem totally worth exploring this possibility for us.


>> * If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>>   between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
>>   some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
>>   try this, there will be extra issues likely.
> 
> I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.

Code bounties sustain a/the developer(s) working on it and that way they stay 
active with the project. Of course there are more reliable ways but that does 
not void bounties. Also, even if Michael just proposed code bounties - nothing 
stops us from sponsoring non-code-bounties to sustain FFmpeg. For SPI, their 
limitations are our limitations and they are not limited to code bounties.

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Hi,

Le 27 octobre 2023 14:10:15 GMT+03:00, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> a écrit :
>> Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>>> This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
>>> ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
>>> use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
>>> the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
>> 
>>> 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
>> 
>> Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
>
>obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by the options you list.

Do you want transparency there? This is *not* about having open source code and the public code review. This is about people's work commitments and compensation. Martin and I are about the only people here whose taxable income is public information. It doesn't seem to me that people typically want that sort of information public.

And then that means more non-technical work for the unpaid *other* members of the community in managing the paid developers' work. This is also unlikely to ve welcome to most.

>> - via FFlabs or any other reputable OSS multimedia consulting company,
>> - a consortium of large companies, or
>> - directly to a salaried or freelance developer.
>
>Also, it is not that these shall cease to be done. Using SPI money is one more option.

Using SPI money would hypothetically be an option if there was enough money. Currently there is not.

>> That's the part that you'd need to clarify first. What relevant flashy cool development will attract those donations? Why should they be funded by donations rather than more traditional business transactions?
>
>Hen & egg.

What? Why do you need to start spending money before you can have ideas of cool projects? That makes zero sense to me.

>>> * If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>>>   between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
>>>   some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
>>>   try this, there will be extra issues likely.
>> 
>> I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.
>
>Code bounties sustain a/the developer(s) working on it and that way they stay active with the project.

No they don't. They make up a precarious insecure and unstable financial situation. That's the literal opposite of sustainability.

It's fine to take a bounty as a bit of extra income, or as an internship, but that is about it.
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Am 27.10.23 um 13:30 schrieb Rémi Denis-Courmont:
> Hi,
> 
> Le 27 octobre 2023 14:10:15 GMT+03:00, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> a écrit :
>>> Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>>>> This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
>>>> ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
>>>> use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
>>>> the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
>>>
>>>> 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
>>>
>>> Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
>>
>> obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by the options you list.
> 
> Do you want transparency there? This is *not* about having open source code and the public code review. 

Yes, absolutely. We are an *open* project.
And no, we of course don't talk about the review part.


> This is about people's work commitments and compensation. Martin and I are about the only people here whose taxable income is public information. It doesn't seem to me that people typically want that sort of information public.

If s.o. is not fine with receiving these funds in public, than this is not our 
public money's problem. This cuts off this individual from receiving SPI money 
in the first place but not cutting anyone off the other options you listed.
We don't refund in private for travel & hardware, same must be true for SPI 
sponsored development.


> And then that means more non-technical work for the unpaid *other* members of the community in managing the paid developers' work. This is also unlikely to ve welcome to most.
> 
>>> - via FFlabs or any other reputable OSS multimedia consulting company,
>>> - a consortium of large companies, or
>>> - directly to a salaried or freelance developer.
>>
>> Also, it is not that these shall cease to be done. Using SPI money is one more option.
> 
> Using SPI money would hypothetically be an option if there was enough money. Currently there is not.

There is enough budget to fund several of the smaller tasks Michael proposed.


>>> That's the part that you'd need to clarify first. What relevant flashy cool development will attract those donations? Why should they be funded by donations rather than more traditional business transactions?
>>
>> Hen & egg.
> 
> What? Why do you need to start spending money before you can have ideas of cool projects? That makes zero sense to me.

What? Michael asked specifically to propose cool projects.


>>>> * If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>>>>    between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
>>>>    some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
>>>>    try this, there will be extra issues likely.
>>>
>>> I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.
>>
>> Code bounties sustain a/the developer(s) working on it and that way they stay active with the project.
> 
> No they don't. They make up a precarious insecure and unstable financial situation. That's the literal opposite of sustainability.
> 
> It's fine to take a bounty as a bit of extra income, or as an internship, but that is about it.

That might be true for you and not for others. You deleted history here where I 
said there are more reliable ways but they don't void bounties and that even if 
this thread is about bounties, we are not limited to them.

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

   Hi,

Le perjantaina 27. lokakuuta 2023, 15.24.38 EEST Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-
devel a écrit :
> >>> Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future 
additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
> >> obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by
> >> the options you list.> 
> > Do you want transparency there? This is *not* about having open source
> > code and the public code review.

> Yes, absolutely. We are an *open* project.

This is about the funding organisation(s) and the recipient developer(s) in 
need of sustainable funding. While my income is public (if you know where to 
look), I sincerely doubt that many people *here* would want theirs published. 
I rather think that they would see it as a major intrusion to their privacy.

I too prefer standard specifications and source code open, but this is about 
people's personal information, not source code. Whether you like it or not, 
that really is a *downside* of going through the mailing list or the GA, 
simply because it is a major turn-off. If SPI requires going through the 
mailing list, then that is also a downside of going through SPI.

> > Using SPI money would hypothetically be an option if there was enough
> > money. Currently there is not.
> There is enough budget to fund several of the smaller tasks Michael
> proposed.

But that has nothing to do with building a sustainable OSS development 
ecosystem. Funding small tasks is great to get students to work their summer 
on FFmpeg rather than writing proprietary business code at a local web company 
(at least if you have willing mentors).

But Michael specifically framed this "financial sustainability plan" for grown-
up adult "developers [who] no longer live with their parents". It is *not* 
sustainable to fund them with 5000€ bounties. At that point in our lives, most 
people would need somewhat stable income, both for financial and psychological 
well-being.

If you have a credible plan for SPI to get enough income to provide that kind 
of stable income to even one developer, then by all mean, lets see that plan. 
But I don't see it. Offering bounties is a complete waste of time and money in 
this regard (it might be a good idea for other purposes, but that's a different 
discussion).

> >>> That's the part that you'd need to clarify first. What relevant flashy
> >>> cool development will attract those donations? Why should they be
> >>> funded by donations rather than more traditional business transactions?

> >> Hen & egg.
> > 
> > What? Why do you need to start spending money before you can have ideas of
> > cool projects? That makes zero sense to me.
> What? Michael asked specifically to propose cool projects.

And I asked why it would be better to fund those hypothetical projects through 
SPI rather than privately and directly.

-- 
レミ・デニ-クールモン
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2343 bytes --]

On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 06:24:58PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
>    Hi,
> 
> Le perjantaina 27. lokakuuta 2023, 15.24.38 EEST Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-
> devel a écrit :
> > >>> Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future 
> additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
> > >> obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by
> > >> the options you list.> 
> > > Do you want transparency there? This is *not* about having open source
> > > code and the public code review.
> 
> > Yes, absolutely. We are an *open* project.
> 
> This is about the funding organisation(s) and the recipient developer(s) in 
> need of sustainable funding. While my income is public (if you know where to 
> look), I sincerely doubt that many people *here* would want theirs published. 
> I rather think that they would see it as a major intrusion to their privacy.
> 
> I too prefer standard specifications and source code open, but this is about 
> people's personal information, not source code. Whether you like it or not, 
> that really is a *downside* of going through the mailing list or the GA, 
> simply because it is a major turn-off.

Isnt this the same for all options of full time payment we have ?

Consider FFlabs, you can look at who is being paid by FFlabs, its being
mentioned in various places.
Then look at what these people do, so you know what they are paid for.

It may give the impression of more privacy but iam not sure it really
is that much more private.

the list of contractors and employees for such a company would have to
be kept secret and people would need to use a pseudonym. use TOR
and so on.
That said, using a pseudonym is possible with SPI too to some extend.
One can just use a pseudonym, seperate mail address, TOR to post a
proposal. And if one likes, privately tell interrested parties who they
are. SPI will need their real name i think and this will IIUC be
known to the banks and government and so on. So its not full
anonymity but maybe its similar to the light privacy other companies
provide

thx

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

I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is
to question oneself and others. -- Socrates

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le perjantaina 27. lokakuuta 2023, 19.05.51 EEST Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > This is about the funding organisation(s) and the recipient developer(s)
> > in
> > need of sustainable funding. While my income is public (if you know where
> > to look), I sincerely doubt that many people *here* would want theirs
> > published. I rather think that they would see it as a major intrusion to
> > their privacy.
> > 
> > I too prefer standard specifications and source code open, but this is
> > about people's personal information, not source code. Whether you like it
> > or not, that really is a *downside* of going through the mailing list or
> > the GA, simply because it is a major turn-off.
> 
> Isnt this the same for all options of full time payment we have ?

> Consider FFlabs, you can look at who is being paid by FFlabs, its being
> mentioned in various places.
> Then look at what these people do, so you know what they are paid for.

I don't know if FFlabs publishes the payments it makes to its consultants, so 
I can't answer your question. But it sounds odd, as I would expect that that 
would violate privacy laws. All FFlabs seems to publish is who their 
consultants are, not what they work on or for.

> It may give the impression of more privacy but iam not sure it really
> is that much more private.

In most countries, individual income is more or less confidential while 
business contracts have business secrecy.

Even here, I know at least one of my colleagues has applied to have their 
taxable income delisted on the basis of GDPR.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Cosmin Stejerean via ffmpeg-devel]

> On Oct 27, 2023, at 9:14 AM, Rémi Denis-Courmont <remi@remlab.net> wrote:
> 
>> Consider FFlabs, you can look at who is being paid by FFlabs, its being
>> mentioned in various places.
>> Then look at what these people do, so you know what they are paid for.
> 
> I don't know if FFlabs publishes the payments it makes to its consultants, so 
> I can't answer your question. But it sounds odd, as I would expect that that 
> would violate privacy laws. All FFlabs seems to publish is who their 
> consultants are, not what they work on or for.

With a list of FFLabs consultants the "what they work on" can be extracted from the git log or mailing list patches. Not who is paying for the work or how much is being paid, but certainly the what can be inferred with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

- Cosmin
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le perjantaina 27. lokakuuta 2023, 21.52.51 EEST Cosmin Stejerean via ffmpeg-
devel a écrit :
> With a list of FFLabs consultants the "what they work on" can be extracted
> from the git log or mailing list patches. Not who is paying for the work or
> how much is being paid, but certainly the what can be inferred with a
> reasonable degree of accuracy.

In other words, we know neither what the statement of work is, nor how much 
FFlabs is paid for or passes on to the consultants. We just guess that maybe 
what the people listed as consultants are paid to do what they do.

Then that is nowhere near the level of labour-intensive (for the GA) and 
privacy-intrusive (for the consultants) that SPI funding would involve, more 
or less making my point.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Cosmin Stejerean via ffmpeg-devel]

> On Oct 27, 2023, at 12:00 PM, Rémi Denis-Courmont <remi@remlab.net> wrote:
> 
> Le perjantaina 27. lokakuuta 2023, 21.52.51 EEST Cosmin Stejerean via ffmpeg-
> devel a écrit :
>> With a list of FFLabs consultants the "what they work on" can be extracted
>> from the git log or mailing list patches. Not who is paying for the work or
>> how much is being paid, but certainly the what can be inferred with a
>> reasonable degree of accuracy.
> 
> In other words, we know neither what the statement of work is, nor how much 
> FFlabs is paid for or passes on to the consultants. We just guess that maybe 
> what the people listed as consultants are paid to do what they do.
> 
> Then that is nowhere near the level of labour-intensive (for the GA) and 
> privacy-intrusive (for the consultants) that SPI funding would involve, more 
> or less making my point.

Sure, work done via FFLabs has more privacy than work funded with non-profit SPI donations. It's not clear what the problem is though, nobody is forced to accept work via the SPI route, presumably folks can continue to work via FFLabs or via other commercial contracts exclusively if they so prefer. Having more transparency for work funded from donations seems like a good thing.

- Cosmin
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 01:10:15PM +0200, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Am 27.10.23 um 12:43 schrieb Rémi Denis-Courmont:
> > 
> > 
> > Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
> > > This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
> > > ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
> > > use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
> > > the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
> > 
> > > 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
> > 
> > Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
> 
> obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by the
> options you list.

SPI is also tax exempt, so depending on the exact financial details of
everything, the cost for the company donating might be lower in relation
to how much money ends with the developer after all taxes


> 
> > - via FFlabs or any other reputable OSS multimedia consulting company,
> > - a consortium of large companies, or
> > - directly to a salaried or freelance developer.
> 
> Also, it is not that these shall cease to be done. Using SPI money is one
> more option.

yes, exactly!

thx

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

Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us
and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what
is excellent in them. -- Plutarch

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 01:43:34PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
[...]
> >* If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
> >  between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
> >  some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
> >  try this, there will be extra issues likely.
> 
> I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.

This is just a first step.
If we can attract the financial resources to pay people in a repeated fashion
"each month" then thats absolutely what id like to do with SPI

thx

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

The real ebay dictionary, page 1
"Used only once"    - "Some unspecified defect prevented a second use"
"In good condition" - "Can be repaird by experienced expert"
"As is" - "You wouldnt want it even if you were payed for it, if you knew ..."

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Kieran Kunhya]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2023 at 05:32, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 01:43:34PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> >
> >
> > Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <
> michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
> [...]
> > >* If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a
> cost of
> > >  between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself
> ready for
> > >  some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first
> time we
> > >  try this, there will be extra issues likely.
> >
> > I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's
> condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.
>
> This is just a first step.
> If we can attract the financial resources to pay people in a repeated
> fashion
> "each month" then thats absolutely what id like to do with SPI
>

The thing we need for "sustainability" is someone to work full-time on
maintenance work like YUVJ removal that doesn't get done otherwise
(literally we have talked about this for the last five or more years). Nor
would any company fund it as a bounty as it provides no benefit to them.
This is the complete opposite of "some flashy FFmpeg project".

Kieran Kunhya
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 06:46:42AM -0700, Kieran Kunhya wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Oct 2023 at 05:32, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 01:43:34PM +0300, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <
> > michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
> > [...]
> > > >* If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a
> > cost of
> > > >  between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself
> > ready for
> > > >  some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first
> > time we
> > > >  try this, there will be extra issues likely.
> > >
> > > I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's
> > condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.
> >
> > This is just a first step.
> > If we can attract the financial resources to pay people in a repeated
> > fashion
> > "each month" then thats absolutely what id like to do with SPI
> >
> 
> The thing we need for "sustainability" is someone to work full-time on
> maintenance work

yes, I think we all know and agree on that


> like YUVJ removal

iam not sure thats a good example, but anyway


> that doesn't get done otherwise

yes


> (literally we have talked about this for the last five or more years).

And thats great, but you know "talk" isnt good enough


> Nor
> would any company fund it as a bounty as it provides no benefit to them.

now ive seen contracts and such but there are NDAs so i cannot give anything
specific but this is wrong. Companies do care and fund some things that
do not give an immedeate benefit to them but are rather things for the
long term of the project (which will beneift the company only over time)


> This is the complete opposite of "some flashy FFmpeg project".

yes, let me spell my plan out again (which is bassed in fact on previous
suggestions from others)

1. fund some flashy FFmpeg projects
2. seek more donations (explain its for sustainability and full time
   payments if possible and smaller but important areas (flashy projects) when
   its not enough for full time payments)
do 1+2 in parallel, 1. helps 2.
3. if we manage to receive a steady stream of donations that can support
   part time or full time development, use it for that.

The flashy stuff is to get started, we cannot pay people full time with a one time
budget of 150k$. we can pay several people with that if we can get that in donations
per year.

thx

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

Asymptotically faster algorithms should always be preferred if you have
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 11:45 AM Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
wrote:

> This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
> ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not
> currently
> use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled
> by
> the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
>
> 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
> 2. We should activly seek more donations for SPI-FFmpeg
>
> To help 2. we should favor flashy, cool development that can bring in more
> donations
>

Hm... There's a lot going in the above. I'd like to dissect. With 2, are
you looking for end user donations, or corporate contributions? Without
trying to be too picky, I believe they are different. Users like flashy new
features. My impression from discussions is that corporations are asking
for a lot of things, but flashy new features aren't the ones I've heard
them ask for.

With his Demuxed lightning talk, Kieran was aiming for corporate
contributions, not end user donations. I'd like to play advocate for the
devil for a second. Why would they do that? What might their desired
outcomes be?
- a more stable, polite, professional community (community sustainability)
- continued codebase maintenance, support, bugfixing (codebase
sustainability)
- so that devs who write features important to them might stay around and
maintain said features and possibly even become friendly mentors /
reviewers for future contributors - maybe even develop more features
(developer sustainability)

I also think they'd like safeguards in place. If they are willing to set
aside non-trivial amounts of *their* (not ours) money that can pay for the
annual lifelihood of a fulltime developer ("salary"), then this can no
longer be carried with community votes of an often hostile community. I
agree with Michael's point earlier that 501c3 donations are tax-deductible
for US-based corporations, which might be helpful. Maybe that can be done
with EU-based non-profits also (not an expert there). More importantly,
though, is that I doubt they would just "give" the money and sit on the
sidelines. They'd ask for a seat at the table in return - it is *their*
money, after all. In US non-profits, this is called an advisory board.
Also, these non-profits are usually run by an executive director which has
the support of that board & community. This guarantees some professional
accountability, e.g. to ensure the donations are used for useful purposes
in a somewhat-professional/accountable fashion (not just parties).

Some of this probably sounds scary to some of you. But the idea that they'd
just throw us some money and see what happens is equally scary to them. Our
community's track record (professionalism, politeness, self-sustainability)
is not good enough for that.

Ronald
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Hi,

Am 28.10.23 um 16:20 schrieb Ronald S. Bultje:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 11:45 AM Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
> wrote:
> 
>> This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
>> ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not
>> currently
>> use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled
>> by
>> the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
>>
>> 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
>> 2. We should activly seek more donations for SPI-FFmpeg
>>
>> To help 2. we should favor flashy, cool development that can bring in more
>> donations
>>
> 
> Hm... There's a lot going in the above. I'd like to dissect. With 2, are
> you looking for end user donations, or corporate contributions? Without
> trying to be too picky, I believe they are different. Users like flashy new
> features. My impression from discussions is that corporations are asking
> for a lot of things, but flashy new features aren't the ones I've heard
> them ask for.
> 
> With his Demuxed lightning talk, Kieran was aiming for corporate
> contributions, not end user donations. I'd like to play advocate for the
> devil for a second. Why would they do that? What might their desired
> outcomes be?
> - a more stable, polite, professional community (community sustainability)
> - continued codebase maintenance, support, bugfixing (codebase
> sustainability)
> - so that devs who write features important to them might stay around and
> maintain said features and possibly even become friendly mentors /
> reviewers for future contributors - maybe even develop more features
> (developer sustainability)
> 
> I also think they'd like safeguards in place. If they are willing to set
> aside non-trivial amounts of *their* (not ours) money that can pay for the
> annual lifelihood of a fulltime developer ("salary"), then this can no
> longer be carried with community votes of an often hostile community. I
> agree with Michael's point earlier that 501c3 donations are tax-deductible
> for US-based corporations, which might be helpful. Maybe that can be done
> with EU-based non-profits also (not an expert there). More importantly,
> though, is that I doubt they would just "give" the money and sit on the
> sidelines. They'd ask for a seat at the table in return - it is *their*
> money, after all. In US non-profits, this is called an advisory board.
> Also, these non-profits are usually run by an executive director which has
> the support of that board & community. This guarantees some professional
> accountability, e.g. to ensure the donations are used for useful purposes
> in a somewhat-professional/accountable fashion (not just parties).
> 
> Some of this probably sounds scary to some of you. But the idea that they'd
> just throw us some money and see what happens is equally scary to them. Our
> community's track record (professionalism, politeness, self-sustainability)
> is not good enough for that.

I don't mind where the SPI money comes from. If it does not come from scared 
companies, that's fine. If they require more paperwork and won't do it via SPI, 
that's fine as well. We can give them some alternatives, like Kieran did, that 
fit into their world.

Right now, as we have no way accepted to spent SPI money except for travel & hw, 
it is also not very appealing to donate at all - because nothing happens with 
the money, either for the donors direct interests nor general interests in the 
project.

What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money aside 
from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies beurocracy, I 
cannot see. If we would have a proper way to spend the money, donating could 
become more appealing. If we set this up and we know it could be brought to good 
use, instead of sitting in the account, it could make donating more appealing 
and advertising for that way easier. And if it does not, we lost exactly nothing.

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi Thilo,

On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> aside
> from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> beurocracy, I
> cannot see.
>

I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
response to.

I'm happy to elaborate, but I think we're talking about two completely
different things at this point. Spending SPI money is great. But Kieran
talked about *raising* donations from the very companies you (seem to?)
prefer to ignore because of their bureaucracy. If we're talking about
distinct things, we'll likely end up with distinct (and multiple) solutions.

Ronald
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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Hi ronald

On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> Hi Thilo,
> 
> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
> > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> > aside
> > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > beurocracy, I
> > cannot see.
> >
> 
> I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
> talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> response to.

a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed yet.
So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
it.

thx

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

Does the universe only have a finite lifespan? No, its going to go on
forever, its just that you wont like living in it. -- Hiranya Peiri

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> Hi ronald
> 
> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > Hi Thilo,
> > 
> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> > > aside
> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > > beurocracy, I
> > > cannot see.
> > >
> > 
> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> > response to.
> 
> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed yet.
> So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
> it.

some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a respone
to any presentation of anyone else

Donations from people vs companies: both really.

Peoples donations would only matter if we can increase awareness of people
using FFmpeg. We have over a billion users but they dont know it.
if each user gives us 1cent per year our sustainability is solved.
So driving awareness alone would solve this already, even if only 0.1%
of users would donate 10$ per year that would do.

companies?
will any company donate 500k$ per year into SPI? Most companies will be
very hesitatnt before seeing us using funds effectively from SPI.
Thats why we need to show this
And yes many companies will prefer doing it over a company
But some will favor a donation to 501(3) where everything is transparent.

I cannot understand the hostility that kieran has towards this plan.
And i find his toxicity towards it very troubbling

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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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Paul B Mahol]

On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 8:02 PM Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > Hi ronald
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > > Hi Thilo,
> > >
> > > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI
> money
> > > > aside
> > > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > > > beurocracy, I
> > > > cannot see.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant
> when he
> > > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> > > response to.
> >
> > a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed
> yet.
> > So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone
> to
> > it.
>
> some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a respone
> to any presentation of anyone else
>
> Donations from people vs companies: both really.
>
> Peoples donations would only matter if we can increase awareness of people
> using FFmpeg. We have over a billion users but they dont know it.
> if each user gives us 1cent per year our sustainability is solved.
> So driving awareness alone would solve this already, even if only 0.1%
> of users would donate 10$ per year that would do.
>
> companies?
> will any company donate 500k$ per year into SPI? Most companies will be
> very hesitatnt before seeing us using funds effectively from SPI.
> Thats why we need to show this
> And yes many companies will prefer doing it over a company
> But some will favor a donation to 501(3) where everything is transparent.
>
> I cannot understand the hostility that kieran has towards this plan.
> And i find his toxicity towards it very troubbling
>

The only toxic problem is you. Please leave.


>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> ffmpeg-devel mailing list
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org
> https://ffmpeg.org/mailman/listinfo/ffmpeg-devel
>
> To unsubscribe, visit link above, or email
> ffmpeg-devel-request@ffmpeg.org with subject "unsubscribe".
>
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2517 bytes --]

On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 08:01:57PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > Hi ronald
> > 
> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > > Hi Thilo,
> > > 
> > > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> > > > aside
> > > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > > > beurocracy, I
> > > > cannot see.
> > > >
> > > 
> > > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
> > > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> > > response to.
> > 
> > a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed yet.
> > So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
> > it.
> 
> some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a respone
> to any presentation of anyone else
> 
> Donations from people vs companies: both really.
> 
> Peoples donations would only matter if we can increase awareness of people
> using FFmpeg. We have over a billion users but they dont know it.
> if each user gives us 1cent per year our sustainability is solved.
> So driving awareness alone would solve this already, even if only 0.1%
> of users would donate 10$ per year that would do.
> 
> companies?
> will any company donate 500k$ per year into SPI? Most companies will be
> very hesitatnt before seeing us using funds effectively from SPI.
> Thats why we need to show this
> And yes many companies will prefer doing it over a company
> But some will favor a donation to 501(3) where everything is transparent.
> 

> I cannot understand the hostility that kieran has towards this plan.
> And i find his toxicity towards it very troubbling

It seems this can be understood in a offensive way
that was not intended
What i meant is that i find it troubbling that kieran not just opposes the proposal but seems to try to kill it.

again sorry, i had not intended this to read in a offensive way, iam
not sure how i missed this before sending the mail

[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Some people wanted to paint the bikeshed green, some blue and some pink.
People argued and fought, when they finally agreed, only rust was left.

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Hi,

Le 28 octobre 2023 21:01:57 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>> Hi ronald
>> 
>> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
>> > Hi Thilo,
>> > 
>> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
>> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
>> > 
>> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
>> > > aside
>> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
>> > > beurocracy, I
>> > > cannot see.
>> > >
>> > 
>> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
>> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
>> > response to.
>> 
>> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed yet.
>> So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
>> it.
>
>some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a respone
>to any presentation of anyone else
>
>Donations from people vs companies: both really.

I think Ronald's point is that you need to pick one, and clarify which it is, because as Ronald explained, it's unlikely that a *good* plan could address both (conversely a plan that tries to address both is probably poor and flawed).

In other words, if you want to cover both cases, you need two separate plans.

And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money. This is very much counter to the current project setup, which (depending whom you ask) is governed by the GA, or by Fabrice Bellard through his delegates.

This is not to say that these corporate wishes should or should not be accomodated. It is just an observation of those wishes.

>Peoples donations would only matter if we can increase awareness of people
>using FFmpeg. We have over a billion users but they dont know it.
>if each user gives us 1cent per year our sustainability is solved.
>So driving awareness alone would solve this already, even if only 0.1%
>of users would donate 10$ per year that would do.

How do you plan to gain visibility from those billion users? Call me pessimistic but this has been a known problem for 20+ years, and I have yet to glimpse a credible solution.

But again, if somebody has those incredibly cool feature projects in their head, lets hear them first, and then plan accordingly. Otherwise, we.are just debating hypotheticals and that will go nowhere.

>companies?
>will any company donate 500k$ per year into SPI? Most companies will be
>very hesitatnt before seeing us using funds effectively from SPI.
>Thats why we need to show this

Err no. Companies will want some control/oversight/whatever you call want to call it. They are also probably interested in different features that end users.

Mozilla didn't get their big corporate funding for just making cool stuff. It was compensation for provided services such as choice of default search engine. Similarly LF gets funding in exchange for influence in Linux kernel development and other LF activities.

But that sense, you did pick one side: users (and companies donating on behalf of user emloyees), as opposed to big corporations. Then let's hear what those cool features are *first*, and adjust the plan accordingly *next*.

>And yes many companies will prefer doing it over a company
>But some will favor a donation to 501(3) where everything is transparent.
>
>I cannot understand the hostility that kieran has towards this plan.
>And i find his toxicity towards it very troubbling
>
>thx
>
>[...]
>
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3997 bytes --]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 04:35:35PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Le 28 octobre 2023 21:01:57 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
> >On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> >> Hi ronald
> >> 
> >> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> >> > Hi Thilo,
> >> > 
> >> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> >> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> >> > 
> >> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> >> > > aside
> >> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> >> > > beurocracy, I
> >> > > cannot see.
> >> > >
> >> > 
> >> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
> >> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> >> > response to.
> >> 
> >> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed yet.
> >> So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
> >> it.
> >
> >some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a respone
> >to any presentation of anyone else
> >
> >Donations from people vs companies: both really.
> 
> I think Ronald's point is that you need to pick one, and clarify which it is, because as Ronald explained, it's unlikely that a *good* plan could address both (conversely a plan that tries to address both is probably poor and flawed).
> 
> In other words, if you want to cover both cases, you need two separate plans.

you are correct, i agree here but this is a RFC so its not a final
plan.

i think for the donations from users the real question is how many
of our users can we reach to explain them that they are using FFmpeg
and a tiny donation would help us alot.
if thats only a few thousand users then this will not work


> 
> And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money. This is very much counter to the current project setup, which (depending whom you ask) is governed by the GA, or by Fabrice Bellard through his delegates.
> 
> This is not to say that these corporate wishes should or should not be accomodated. It is just an observation of those wishes.

if i look at spi.txt, it says
"SPI needs a contract in place which describes the work to be done. "

so if we have someone do some payed development work be that one time or
continous. There would be a contract that says what is going to be done.
That also would have been approved by the community or GA or whatver and
the company paying would have a say in whats in that contract, really
limited by what we are ok with and what the law allows


> 
> >Peoples donations would only matter if we can increase awareness of people
> >using FFmpeg. We have over a billion users but they dont know it.
> >if each user gives us 1cent per year our sustainability is solved.
> >So driving awareness alone would solve this already, even if only 0.1%
> >of users would donate 10$ per year that would do.
> 
> How do you plan to gain visibility from those billion users? Call me pessimistic but this has been a known problem for 20+ years, and I have yet to glimpse a credible solution.

It depends on the community. If the commuity wants to do it
Just look at some online service which annoy you telling you to disable a add blocker
we could detect a specific usecase we intend to target and print a simple message
once that will not annoy the user a 2nd time
This is very controversal and iam not sure if 99% are against it or find it funny.
Iam just awnsering the "how it can be done" not saying iam in favor or against


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

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities
are wrong. -- Voltaire

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Kieran Kunhya]

>
> so if we have someone do some payed development work be that one time or
> continous. There would be a contract that says what is going to be done.
> That also would have been approved by the community or GA or whatver and
> the company paying would have a say in whats in that contract, really
> limited by what we are ok with and what the law allows


Do you think a paying company would be happy with the private terms of a
contract being discussed on a public ML? Or within a large group of people
in the GA.
You already mentioned that some of your work is covered under NDA so how
does that fit within what you propose above about community approval?

Kieran
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le sunnuntaina 29. lokakuuta 2023, 18.12.58 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 04:35:35PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Le 28 octobre 2023 21:01:57 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer 
<michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
> > >On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > >> Hi ronald
> > >> 
> > >> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > >> > Hi Thilo,
> > >> > 
> > >> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > >> > 
> > >> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > >> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI
> > >> > > money
> > >> > > aside
> > >> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > >> > > beurocracy, I
> > >> > > cannot see.
> > >> > 
> > >> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant
> > >> > when he
> > >> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be
> > >> > a
> > >> > response to.
> > >> 
> > >> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from
> > >> demuxed yet. So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now
> > >> can be a respone to it.
> > >
> > >some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a
> > >respone
> > >to any presentation of anyone else
> > >
> > >Donations from people vs companies: both really.
> > 
> > I think Ronald's point is that you need to pick one, and clarify which it
> > is, because as Ronald explained, it's unlikely that a *good* plan could
> > address both (conversely a plan that tries to address both is probably
> > poor and flawed).
> > 
> > In other words, if you want to cover both cases, you need two separate
> > plans.
> you are correct, i agree here but this is a RFC so its not a final
> plan.
> 
> i think for the donations from users the real question is how many
> of our users can we reach to explain them that they are using FFmpeg
> and a tiny donation would help us alot.
> if thats only a few thousand users then this will not work
> 
> > And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out
> > that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money. This is
> > very much counter to the current project setup, which (depending whom you
> > ask) is governed by the GA, or by Fabrice Bellard through his delegates.
> > 
> > This is not to say that these corporate wishes should or should not be
> > accomodated. It is just an observation of those wishes.
> if i look at spi.txt, it says
> "SPI needs a contract in place which describes the work to be done. "
> 
> so if we have someone do some payed development work be that one time or
> continous. There would be a contract that says what is going to be done.
> That also would have been approved by the community or GA or whatver and
> the company paying would have a say in whats in that contract, really
> limited by what we are ok with and what the law allows

Unfortunately, that is missing the point. If a company wants to pay someone 
for some specific tasks, they can already do that, with or without the 
intervention of SPI. And they already know that they can do that, at least 
without SPI. Your plan A is unnecessary for this case. If SPI has any benefit 
here, it's maybe fiscal. If there is really a tax benefit, you could emphasize 
on the website and social networks tha SPI is available as an option.

Some companies could be willing to provide more sustainable funding for more 
general maintenance, but they would probably require something like what 
Ronald mentioned - especially for FFmpeg whose community has a poor 
reputation.

> > How do you plan to gain visibility from those billion users? Call me
> > pessimistic but this has been a known problem for 20+ years, and I have
> > yet to glimpse a credible solution.

> It depends on the community. If the commuity wants to do it
> Just look at some online service which annoy you telling you to disable a
> add blocker we could detect a specific usecase we intend to target and
> print a simple message once that will not annoy the user a 2nd time
> This is very controversal and iam not sure if 99% are against it or find it
> funny. Iam just awnsering the "how it can be done" not saying iam in favor
> or against

That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency 
developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions, or 
worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.

The FFmpeg CLI tool print stuff, but that's going to be seen by a tiny fraction 
of the user base.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6181 bytes --]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 09:36:13PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Le sunnuntaina 29. lokakuuta 2023, 18.12.58 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 04:35:35PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Le 28 octobre 2023 21:01:57 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer 
> <michael@niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
> > > >On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > > >> Hi ronald
> > > >> 
> > > >> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > > >> > Hi Thilo,
> > > >> > 
> > > >> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > > >> > 
> > > >> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > > >> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI
> > > >> > > money
> > > >> > > aside
> > > >> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > > >> > > beurocracy, I
> > > >> > > cannot see.
> > > >> > 
> > > >> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant
> > > >> > when he
> > > >> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be
> > > >> > a
> > > >> > response to.
> > > >> 
> > > >> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from
> > > >> demuxed yet. So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now
> > > >> can be a respone to it.
> > > >
> > > >some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a
> > > >respone
> > > >to any presentation of anyone else
> > > >
> > > >Donations from people vs companies: both really.
> > > 
> > > I think Ronald's point is that you need to pick one, and clarify which it
> > > is, because as Ronald explained, it's unlikely that a *good* plan could
> > > address both (conversely a plan that tries to address both is probably
> > > poor and flawed).
> > > 
> > > In other words, if you want to cover both cases, you need two separate
> > > plans.
> > you are correct, i agree here but this is a RFC so its not a final
> > plan.
> > 
> > i think for the donations from users the real question is how many
> > of our users can we reach to explain them that they are using FFmpeg
> > and a tiny donation would help us alot.
> > if thats only a few thousand users then this will not work
> > 
> > > And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out
> > > that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money. This is
> > > very much counter to the current project setup, which (depending whom you
> > > ask) is governed by the GA, or by Fabrice Bellard through his delegates.
> > > 
> > > This is not to say that these corporate wishes should or should not be
> > > accomodated. It is just an observation of those wishes.
> > if i look at spi.txt, it says
> > "SPI needs a contract in place which describes the work to be done. "
> > 
> > so if we have someone do some payed development work be that one time or
> > continous. There would be a contract that says what is going to be done.
> > That also would have been approved by the community or GA or whatver and
> > the company paying would have a say in whats in that contract, really
> > limited by what we are ok with and what the law allows
> 
> Unfortunately, that is missing the point. If a company wants to pay someone 
> for some specific tasks, they can already do that, with or without the 
> intervention of SPI. And they already know that they can do that, at least 
> without SPI. Your plan A is unnecessary for this case. If SPI has any benefit 
> here, it's maybe fiscal.

> If there is really a tax benefit, you could emphasize
> on the website and social networks tha SPI is available as an option.

yes, thats a good idea


> 
> Some companies could be willing to provide more sustainable funding for more 
> general maintenance, but they would probably require something like what 
> Ronald mentioned - especially for FFmpeg whose community has a poor 
> reputation.
> 
> > > How do you plan to gain visibility from those billion users? Call me
> > > pessimistic but this has been a known problem for 20+ years, and I have
> > > yet to glimpse a credible solution.
> 
> > It depends on the community. If the commuity wants to do it
> > Just look at some online service which annoy you telling you to disable a
> > add blocker we could detect a specific usecase we intend to target and
> > print a simple message once that will not annoy the user a 2nd time
> > This is very controversal and iam not sure if 99% are against it or find it
> > funny. Iam just awnsering the "how it can be done" not saying iam in favor
> > or against
> 
> That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency 
> developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions, or 
> worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.

If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
intended to to, inform users
again, like i said thats hypothetical and controversal. But basically doing
the same as companies which put advertisements in without asking either creator
nor viewer.
Also dont ignore the effect of the controversy around this ;)
It would be on many news sites that XYZ displayed a notice
that it used FFmpeg and asked for donations for sustainability.
All these news articles are free amplification of the message ;)
We could reach quite a few people with this. its just controversal


> 
> The FFmpeg CLI tool print stuff, but that's going to be seen by a tiny fraction 
> of the user base.

yes

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

The real ebay dictionary, page 1
"Used only once"    - "Some unspecified defect prevented a second use"
"In good condition" - "Can be repaird by experienced expert"
"As is" - "You wouldnt want it even if you were payed for it, if you knew ..."

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le tiistaina 31. lokakuuta 2023, 18.58.57 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency
> > developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions,
> > or worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.
> 
> If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
> will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
> noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
> They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
> intended to to, inform users again, like i said thats hypothetical and
> controversal. But basically doing the same as companies which put
> advertisements in without asking either creator nor viewer.

How do you show ads without a GUI? Hijack the video signal from the decoder? 
Call a blocking MessageBox? Start the browser unsolicited?

In any case, you will only piss people off. And pissed off people are not known 
to give money. Rather they will look for another version of the affected app or 
another app to "fix" the "bug".

And anyhow, somebody would object to the TC, and I cannot believe that the TC 
would then allow that sort of thing to be committed.

But for the sake of the argument...

> Also dont ignore the effect of the controversy around this ;)

That works both ways, unless you believe that "there is no such thing as bad 
press".

> It would be on many news sites that XYZ displayed a notice
> that it used FFmpeg and asked for donations for sustainability.

Realistically, FFmpeg gets updated in reverse depencies application over 
periods of months, or even years. A few minor FFmpeg-based app letting this 
slip through would probably not be newsworthy. And it seems unlikely that 
major ones like Kodi, mpv, VLC, etc, would let this slip through in the first 
place.

> All these news articles are free amplification of the message ;)

That most probably will not happen, and if it does, it will most probably be 
in a bad way.

This idea is a non-starter IMO.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2560 bytes --]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 07:19:41PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Le tiistaina 31. lokakuuta 2023, 18.58.57 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > > That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency
> > > developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions,
> > > or worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.
> > 
> > If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
> > will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
> > noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
> > They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
> > intended to to, inform users again, like i said thats hypothetical and
> > controversal. But basically doing the same as companies which put
> > advertisements in without asking either creator nor viewer.
> 
> How do you show ads without a GUI? Hijack the video signal from the decoder? 

In this very very hypothetical idea ...
it would not be a add, but a simple information box shown briefly that says
something like "decoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy" / "encoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy"


> Call a blocking MessageBox? Start the browser unsolicited?

no, that would not work in many cases and is very intrusive


> 
> In any case, you will only piss people off. And pissed off people are not known 
> to give money. Rather they will look for another version of the affected app or 
> another app to "fix" the "bug".

its only shown once they dont have to do that.
and for video streaming services they cannot replace the application as it would
be server side. Also for these they are already full of advertisements noone
will be offended by a few seconds shown box with 1-2 lines of text between
several minute adds already.


> 
> And anyhow, somebody would object to the TC, and I cannot believe that the TC 
> would then allow that sort of thing to be committed.
> 
> But for the sake of the argument...

its hypothetical only really,
more or less to explore a thought experiment, see where it could lead and
if anything can be learnt from it



[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

If you drop bombs on a foreign country and kill a hundred thousand
innocent people, expect your government to call the consequence
"unprovoked inhuman terrorist attacks" and use it to justify dropping
more bombs and killing more people. The technology changed, the idea is old.

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Hendrik Leppkes]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 6:31 PM Michael Niedermayer
<michael@niedermayer.cc> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 07:19:41PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > Le tiistaina 31. lokakuuta 2023, 18.58.57 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > > > That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency
> > > > developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions,
> > > > or worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.
> > >
> > > If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
> > > will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
> > > noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
> > > They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
> > > intended to to, inform users again, like i said thats hypothetical and
> > > controversal. But basically doing the same as companies which put
> > > advertisements in without asking either creator nor viewer.
> >
> > How do you show ads without a GUI? Hijack the video signal from the decoder?
>
> In this very very hypothetical idea ...
> it would not be a add, but a simple information box shown briefly that says
> something like "decoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy" / "encoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy"
>

If as a professional user of a decoder library, it starts putting in
an ad or a watermark or whatever you want to call it, even if briefly,
i'm looking for a new decoder library, or will venture to remove the
message instantly.
And if that wasn't enough to completely destroy the projects
reputation, if you then try to hide it by randomizing or whatever, so
that testing before deployment doesn't see it, that definitely will.

This is not acceptable behavior for a decoder. And no "exposure" due
to bad press will actually yield you a benefit. Companies won't pay
you, because that doesn't get rid of the message. They'll pay an
engineer to disable it.

- Hendrik
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2879 bytes --]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 06:37:58PM +0100, Hendrik Leppkes wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 6:31 PM Michael Niedermayer
> <michael@niedermayer.cc> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 07:19:41PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > > Le tiistaina 31. lokakuuta 2023, 18.58.57 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > > > > That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency
> > > > > developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions,
> > > > > or worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.
> > > >
> > > > If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
> > > > will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
> > > > noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
> > > > They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
> > > > intended to to, inform users again, like i said thats hypothetical and
> > > > controversal. But basically doing the same as companies which put
> > > > advertisements in without asking either creator nor viewer.
> > >
> > > How do you show ads without a GUI? Hijack the video signal from the decoder?
> >
> > In this very very hypothetical idea ...
> > it would not be a add, but a simple information box shown briefly that says
> > something like "decoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy" / "encoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy"
> >
> 
> If as a professional user of a decoder library, it starts putting in
> an ad or a watermark or whatever you want to call it, even if briefly,
> i'm looking for a new decoder library, or will venture to remove the
> message instantly.
> And if that wasn't enough to completely destroy the projects
> reputation, if you then try to hide it by randomizing or whatever, so
> that testing before deployment doesn't see it, that definitely will.
> 
> This is not acceptable behavior for a decoder. And no "exposure" due

like i said, its a hypothetical and controversal thought experiment


> to bad press will actually yield you a benefit.

> Companies won't pay
> you, because that doesn't get rid of the message.

That misses the goal, the goal of this was to reach some of the more than
1 billion users we have and who do not know they are using FFmpeg.


> They'll pay an
> engineer to disable it.

it would just show up once lets say on a specific day 1 year after the code
is added. we would remove it on that day ourselfs.
It would just be a simple one time shown message that says
"Decoded by ffmpeg.org / Please donate, if you enjoy"

thx

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

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance,
they as if into a greater darkness enter who devote themselves
to the Knowledge alone. -- Isha Upanishad

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Am 31.10.23 um 18:48 schrieb Michael Niedermayer:
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 06:37:58PM +0100, Hendrik Leppkes wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 6:31 PM Michael Niedermayer
>> <michael@niedermayer.cc> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 07:19:41PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
>>>> Le tiistaina 31. lokakuuta 2023, 18.58.57 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
>>>>>> That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency
>>>>>> developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions,
>>>>>> or worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.
>>>>>
>>>>> If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
>>>>> will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
>>>>> noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
>>>>> They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
>>>>> intended to to, inform users again, like i said thats hypothetical and
>>>>> controversal. But basically doing the same as companies which put
>>>>> advertisements in without asking either creator nor viewer.
>>>>
>>>> How do you show ads without a GUI? Hijack the video signal from the decoder?
>>>
>>> In this very very hypothetical idea ...
>>> it would not be a add, but a simple information box shown briefly that says
>>> something like "decoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy" / "encoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy"
>>>
>>
>> If as a professional user of a decoder library, it starts putting in
>> an ad or a watermark or whatever you want to call it, even if briefly,
>> i'm looking for a new decoder library, or will venture to remove the
>> message instantly.
>> And if that wasn't enough to completely destroy the projects
>> reputation, if you then try to hide it by randomizing or whatever, so
>> that testing before deployment doesn't see it, that definitely will.
>>
>> This is not acceptable behavior for a decoder. And no "exposure" due
> 
> like i said, its a hypothetical and controversal thought experiment
> 
> 
>> to bad press will actually yield you a benefit.
> 
>> Companies won't pay
>> you, because that doesn't get rid of the message.
> 
> That misses the goal, the goal of this was to reach some of the more than
> 1 billion users we have and who do not know they are using FFmpeg.
> 
> 
>> They'll pay an
>> engineer to disable it.
> 
> it would just show up once lets say on a specific day 1 year after the code
> is added. we would remove it on that day ourselfs.
> It would just be a simple one time shown message that says
> "Decoded by ffmpeg.org / Please donate, if you enjoy"

Just my two cents and I admit I only flew over the last few mails.
Some visual output into the decoded streams or things alike (IIUC) should be a 
nogo. Immediate memories about bad pirated movies comes to mind... so if this is 
the idea, we should really not do this, especially not (IIUC) if it would occur 
pseudo-randomly based on some time constraint.
The one way I think this might be done, would be if we create a donations video 
filter to blend something like this in only if the user specifically adds this 
filter to their chain.

In contrast, the idea of printing some "please donate" into the command line 
output I find quite ok. We could add one line with compressed info.
The reach of that is big and should not offend any user at all (assuming it does 
also disappear if we set silent mode). How big this impact might be, was 
revealed by the deprication message libav added back in the days. Although it is 
of course not that news-worthy.

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Steven Liu]

Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> 于2023年11月1日周三 08:04写道：
>

> > it would just show up once lets say on a specific day 1 year after the code
> > is added. we would remove it on that day ourselfs.
> > It would just be a simple one time shown message that says
> > "Decoded by ffmpeg.org / Please donate, if you enjoy"
>
> Just my two cents and I admit I only flew over the last few mails.
> Some visual output into the decoded streams or things alike (IIUC) should be a
> nogo. Immediate memories about bad pirated movies comes to mind... so if this is
> the idea, we should really not do this, especially not (IIUC) if it would occur
> pseudo-randomly based on some time constraint.
Agreed, i think show message about donation above or after banner is a
good idea looks like vim.
“ Help poor children in Uganda!” => “ Help poor developers in FFmpeg!”

Thanks
Steven
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Nicolas George]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 425 bytes --]

Rémi Denis-Courmont (12023-10-29):
> And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out
> that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money.

And this is why the only acceptable answer is: to hell with them and
anybody who supports them.

That might make less money in donations and that more of us will have to
keep a day job, but it is the price of freedom.

-- 
  Nicolas George

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi Nicolas,

On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 12:47 PM Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:

> Rémi Denis-Courmont (12023-10-29):
> > And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out
> > that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money.
>
> And this is why the only acceptable answer is: to hell with them and
> anybody who supports them.
>

No.

*You* may well end up not accepting their offered help, and that's your
call to make. But if others in our community end up accepting their offered
help, there's nothing you can do against it.

Ronald
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Nicolas George]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 431 bytes --]

Ronald S. Bultje (12023-10-29):
> *You* may well end up not accepting their offered help, and that's your
> call to make. But if others in our community end up accepting their offered
> help, there's nothing you can do against it.

Other in the community are free to do as they choose on their own, of
course.

But the project itself should never accept obligations to a corporate
entity. Never.

-- 
  Nicolas George

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Ronald S. Bultje]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 3:46 PM Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:

> Ronald S. Bultje (12023-10-29):
> > *You* may well end up not accepting their offered help, and that's your
> > call to make. But if others in our community end up accepting their
> offered
> > help, there's nothing you can do against it.
>
> Other in the community are free to do as they choose on their own, of
> course.
>
> But the project itself should never accept obligations to a corporate
> entity. Never.
>

"The project" is not a legal entity, how could it? It's not even possible.

Ronald
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Paul B Mahol]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2023 at 8:46 PM Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:

> Ronald S. Bultje (12023-10-29):
> > *You* may well end up not accepting their offered help, and that's your
> > call to make. But if others in our community end up accepting their
> offered
> > help, there's nothing you can do against it.
>
> Other in the community are free to do as they choose on their own, of
> course.
>
> But the project itself should never accept obligations to a corporate
> entity. Never.
>

Project already accepted several obligations to a several corporate
entities.


>
> --
>   Nicolas George
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le sunnuntaina 29. lokakuuta 2023, 18.47.34 EET Nicolas George a écrit :
> Rémi Denis-Courmont (12023-10-29):
> > And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out
> > that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money.
> 
> And this is why the only acceptable answer is: to hell with them and
> anybody who supports them.

You are entitled to your opinion. There are pros and cons either way, that 
different people will weigh differently. If I had meaningful say and stake, I 
would probably feel conflicted.

So I will neither agree nor disagree with you here. However your choice of 
word is very disagreeable, and makes your side of the argument a disservice.

> That might make less money in donations and that more of us will have to
> keep a day job, but it is the price of freedom.

Be careful what you wish for. Michael started this thread, so I suppose that 
he wants funding for himself and/or for some other key developers. They are 
who you are opposing here, rather than bottom feeders such as myself.

-- 
雷米‧德尼-库尔蒙
http://www.remlab.net/



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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Nicolas George]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 549 bytes --]

Rémi Denis-Courmont (12023-10-29):
> Be careful what you wish for. Michael started this thread, so I suppose that 
> he wants funding for himself and/or for some other key developers. They are 

It would be hypocritical of me to take this into considerations.
Corporate sponsorships with strings attached are dangerous and should be
refused, whoever they are offered to.

> who you are opposing here, rather than bottom feeders such as myself.

Please refrain from insinuating that I have insulted you like that.

-- 
  Nicolas George

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Kieran Kunhya]

On Sat, 28 Oct 2023 at 18:21, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
wrote:

> Hi ronald
>
> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > Hi Thilo,
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> >
> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> > > aside
> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > > beurocracy, I
> > > cannot see.
> > >
> >
> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when
> he
> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> > response to.
>
> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed
> yet.
> So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
> it.
>

For the record, I gave the Demuxed lightning talk on Wednesday 25th October
at 1400 PST (2100 UTC).
The first email in this chain was on Thursday 26th October at 1845 EEST
(1545 UTC).

Kieran
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

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On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 10:17:50PM +0100, Kieran Kunhya wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Oct 2023 at 18:21, Michael Niedermayer <michael@niedermayer.cc>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi ronald
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
> > > Hi Thilo,
> > >
> > > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> > > ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
> > > > aside
> > > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
> > > > beurocracy, I
> > > > cannot see.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when
> > he
> > > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> > > response to.
> >
> > a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed
> > yet.
> > So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
> > it.
> >
> 
> For the record, I gave the Demuxed lightning talk on Wednesday 25th October
> at 1400 PST (2100 UTC).
> The first email in this chain was on Thursday 26th October at 1845 EEST
> (1545 UTC).

We should make a more complete timeline and then do proper statistics to
analyze it :)
Iam not offended by this, if people want to investigate where similarities
came from. in fact i still didnt listen to the talk (but i will once i find the time)

what similarities do you see ? is it just the word sustainability and the
general subject ? or more ?
Also giving 100 people the problem of financial sustainability for FFmpeg
how many different solutions do you expect ?
I found 4 (legal) ones and this was the first (which is why it says "A" in
the subject.
I did reject several probably illegal ideas like ICOs ...

The word sustainability is quite rare it occured only 4 times on ffmpeg IRC
3 of these are a week before my mail and a few days before my SWS cleanup
mail. And maybe also on VDD, i dont remember.
What i do remember is that roanld mentioned sustainability,
"no longer crashing with our parents. some of us have kids" on okt 11th
on IRC privatly to me
i have the log still and can post the line if ronald agrees

appendix A
searching for sustainability on IRC:

FreeNode-#ffmpeg-devel.log:Jun 11 18:41:28 <Daemon404>	About: Archive - Cloud - Formats - sustainability - Outsourcing
about? or is it about spending SPI money that we have (which is what thilo seems to imply) and then maybe see if we can get more, although that's not the primary goal? or some mix of the two?
libera.chat-#ffmpeg-devel.log:Okt 09 23:12:59 <BBB>	that comment on daemon404's sustainability linkedin post misses the point a bit ?
libera.chat-#ffmpeg-devel.log:Okt 10 03:00:47 <BBB>	durandal_1707: it jumps from (ffmpeg/videolan dev) sustainability to storage, av1, routing and hardware dev. I don't follow that jump, I guess
libera.chat-#ffmpeg-devel.log:Okt 10 03:18:10 <kierank>	BBB: I think confusion over the word sustainability

appendix B
the SWS cleanup mail
"1013 21:19 To FFmpeg devel (2,3K) [FFmpeg-devel] SWS cleanup / SPI Funding Suggestion"
This also had some replies that inspired some parts

thx

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

Homeopathy is like voting while filling the ballot out with transparent ink.
Sometimes the outcome one wanted occurs. Rarely its worse than filling out
a ballot properly.

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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel]

Am 28.10.23 um 18:43 schrieb Ronald S. Bultje:
> Hi Thilo,
> 
> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
>> What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
>> aside
>> from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
>> beurocracy, I
>> cannot see.
>>
> 
> I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
> talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
> response to.

I am pretty sure Michael did not start this thread because of Kieran's talk, but 
only he can tell.
His talk was just hours ago and I was not there but got that picture from his 
slide quickly. That I even mentioned it, was my honest interest about his 
connection to FFlabs - well, it just made him being angry about me now, so I 
don't persue that any further and for the discussion, its completely irrelevant. 
I should have made it more clear its more like a side note.
Yes, it appears that "sustainability" used in both, the talk and the thread, has 
been received in a wrong way regarding to this discussion from almost anyone 
involved and raised the level of confusing argumentation you mention below.


> I'm happy to elaborate, but I think we're talking about two completely
> different things at this point. Spending SPI money is great. But Kieran
> talked about *raising* donations from the very companies you (seem to?)
> prefer to ignore because of their bureaucracy. If we're talking about
> distinct things, we'll likely end up with distinct (and multiple) solutions.

I agree to the most extend of that. Maybe it could be worthwhile to split this 
discussion into both parts of it.

I ignore, or better say don't care about, companies in regard to fund 
development (or whatever) over SPI in the context of this discussion _IF_ they 
are blocked doing that because of their bureaucracy. And if they do, I am 
obviously happy to deal with them in a way that suits them.

-Thilo
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Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Gijs Peskens]

On 26-10-2023 17:45, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> To help 2. we should favor flashy, cool development that can bring in more
> donations

Wouldn't it make more sense to fund grunt work that's needed, but no-one 
wants to do? I'd imagine there's more developers that like to have their 
name attached to flashy cool new advertisable features and less to 
"boring" "reworked X for stability"
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