[FFmpeg-devel] Project orientation

[Olly Woodman]

On Mon, 6 Jul 2020 at 05:54, Jim DeLaHunt <list+ffmpeg-dev at jdlh.com> wrote:

> On 2020-07-04 07:43, Nicolas George wrote:
> > [In the FFmpeg project,] [t]here is work in making highly-optimized
> > decoders, this work is impressive and creative…. But as far as I can see,
> > that is mostly all there is going on. The rest seems to be rather basic:
> > fixing bugs…, implementing support for
> > features that were decided and designed elsewhere.
> >
> > And it is not just that it is not happening: there is genuine opposition
> > to creativity: things that are not already justified externally, things
> > that do not look like well-known patterns, are met with scepticism and
> > eventually rejected.
> >
> > At this point, we should ask ourselves:
> >
> > Is it what we want the project to be, or is it just what we have let it
> > become?
> >
> > I do not think this evolution is the result of a deliberate choice. I
> > think it is more the result of the stress of success and the stress of a
> > fork. Success can stifle creativity, because creativity implies the risk
> > of failure: the project has become advert to risk.
> >
> > It has evolved that way, but are we fine with it?
> >
> > I personally am not….
>
> I am really happy to see this discussion starting up. It is good timing;
> some new governance committees are forming. They might be able to take
> it on. From my perspective as an outside observer, I think the project
> will benefit from you — the people who are at the heart of the project —
> having this discussion.
>
> For what purpose do all of you contribute to FFmpeg? What is the good
> you see FFmpeg doing? What is FFmpeg's purpose?  What stands in the way
> of FFmpeg achieving its purpose, and of you achieving your own
> individual purpose?
>
> For me, several comments in the thread resonated. They have a theme:
> bringing in new participants:
>
> On 2020-07-04 08:37, James Almer wrote:
> > …Another thing worth mentioning is a lack of new blood. Despite
> > participating in GSoC for a long while, i can't name a student that
> > stuck around after the fact. Mind, there are new devs that started
> > contributing for other reasons, but perhaps not enough?
>
>
> On 2020-07-04 11:20, Soft Works wrote:
>
> > …As a developer (without a well-known name) who wants to contribute a
> patch,
> > things can be quite frustrating here. When that patch accidentally hits
> an
> > area of one the very few who are caring and friendly - you're lucky.
> > But otherwise, a patch will either be ignored or talked into infinity.
> >
> > I have a number of things to contribute, but after it didn’t work well
> > with small things, I decided not to bother with the bigger ones.
>
> On 2020-07-05 11:42, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 05, 2020 at 08:13:25PM +0200, Manolis Stamatogiannakis wrote:
> >> As a fresh contributor, setting up git send-email was a hassle, but
> >> not an insurmountable obstacle.
> > Speaking only for myself, having sent a single-digit number of patches
> > to FFmpeg ever: Setting up git send-email was not a big turnoff. Having
> your
> > patch being not responded to (whether being forgotten, not found
> interesting
> > enough, or whatever other reason) was.
>
>
> To the extent you decide that you want new participants to join you on
> FFmpeg, I'm sorry to say, I think you have a problem. My own experience
> is that this project is more hostile to newcomers than many other free
> culture projects I know (e.g. Python, Thunderbird, Gnucash, Drupal,
> MusicBrainz, Wikipedia). It's not just your rudeness to each other on
> the email lists. It's not just the inattention to patches from new
> developers. It's also a simple lack of telling newcomers: welcome, we
> are glad you are here, we want your help, we will help you learn.
>

As someone who recently tried to send their first patch to FFmpeg,
I'd also like to +1 this. It was completely ignored, despite sending
three reminders (sending a reminder is suggested in the FFmpeg
documentation for submitting patches). Perhaps it was ignored for
a good reason, but a non-response does not tell me that, and nor
does it encourage further involvement.

I've also been quite shocked by some of the rudeness on this mailing
list, and the level to which it appears to be tolerated (or at least, the
extent to which there appear to be no repercussions for those who
repeatedly behave in a way that I'd consider unacceptable in a
professional context).


> Even more deeply, the culture of this project is focussed on checking in
> compileable code to the exclusion of other kinds of contribution:
> testing, documentation, support. Those contributions seem not welcome
> simply because they are not code, and code is all that matters.
>
> I suspect that you may find that some of the things that frustrate you
> are linked to work the project does not value. Repetitive questions on
> the ffmpeg-users list may in part result from the inadequate
> documentation, which doesn't tell users what they need to know. Feeling
> stretched thin over too much code without enough tooling might result
> from the too little of the right unit tests. And so on.
>
> I wish you success as you ask yourself these big questions. I hope it
> helps you have a more pleasant time in this project. I am confident it
> will result in a better FFmpeg.
>
>        —Jim DeLaHunt, software engineer, Vancouver, Canada
>
>
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