James Almer (12022-01-12):
> I think it should be more like, as release manager, he decides when to cut a
> branch and when to tag a release within that branch, and in either case
> giving a warning with some time in advance.
> Saying "Anything else?" then waiting for people and constantly postponing
> tagging is not going to work. And it's not the first time this happens.
> 
> Right now the branch is made and and the feature set frozen, and anything
> that could be backported can wait until 5.0.1. Cutting the branch is when
> interested parties should spoke and be hasty as that means a feature freeze.
> But right now, the release can and should be made whenever Michael wants to.

I agree with that.

My point is more general: Michael takes up the boring tasks that "need"
to be made so that FFmpeg can be considered a "serious" project, even
though he does not enjoy them and he admits he is not good at them.

I consider this a toxic configuration. FFmpeg does not "need" to be a
"serious" project, we just need free time to write beautiful and
efficient code.

It is other projects, projects who use FFmpeg, who need it. We already
give good, free code, and they want more, API stability and backports
and security maintenance. I say: if you want it, pay somebody to do it.
(Not me, I am not interested, that is my point.)

This is reminiscent of the reaction of corporate drones to the log4j
bugs: they expected free maintenance.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George