[FFmpeg-devel] Reintroducing FFmpeg to Debian

[Thomas Goirand]

On 08/16/2014 11:11 PM, Nicolas George wrote:
> L'octidi 28 thermidor, an CCXXII, Bálint Réczey a écrit :
>> Using Gerrit and "file ownersip" are not mutually exclusive. Gerrit
>> can be configured to automatically invite the right people for review
>> based on the changed path. We recently migrated to Gerrit at the
>> Wireshark project and it helps a lot in coordinating the reviews.
> 
> I am afraid this discussion on "Gerrit" or other similar tools is pointless:
> this is trying to solve a human problem with technical means: it never
> works.

The problem was enforcing patch review policies. This technical solution
makes it possible to enforce rules. Sure, it doesn't fix the social
issue completely, but at least if you implement it, it's going to be a
way more difficult to bypass the review system, and the one who does
will really look bad, so it's very unlikely it will happen.

> [...] The fork's manifesto stated that everyone was equal
> amongst equals, with or without commit rights, but the people who do have
> the commit rights are few [...]

Really, when I read "commit rights", in a collaborative process, I feel
like there's something wrong.

> It becomes bad when people not involved in the project start to suffer from
> the consequences of the fork. This is what is happening here, for two
> reasons:
> 
> * distributions adopting one side of the fork for non-technical reasons;

There's been a very well commented technical reason stated here: the
release team don't want to deal with 2 of the same library that are
doing (nearly) the same things, with potentially the same security
issues that we'd have to fix twice rather than once. Now, the "which
side" debate is a different one, which I don't think Debian people are
interested in (at least, *I* am not): we are just suffering from the
consequences of the fork, as you wrote, and would prefer it never happened.

> * one side of the fork not caring about compatibility with the other side.
> 
> Of course, these reasons are interconnected.

Yeah. If both were fully compatible, there would be no issue using one
or the other.

Thomas