[FFmpeg-devel] Project orientation

[Manolis Stamatogiannakis]

On Tue, 7 Jul 2020 at 14:38, Nicolas George <george at nsup.org> wrote:

> Manolis Stamatogiannakis (12020-07-07):
> > I believe I have adequately explained that "less secure" needs to be
> > enabled, not to make your Google account more secure, but to contain
> > the damage from a potential compromise.
> >
> > Yes, "less secure" sounds a lot like marketing slang. But Gmail is not
> used
> > exclusively by CompSci majors :)
>
> I will state it another way.
>
> Anybody should be able to use the software of their choice to read their
> e-mail.
>
> If a compromise around these software have a consequence beyond mail and
> what is directly related to mail, then the fault is not the software's,
> the fault is to whoever tied mail and other things together.
>
> Google has a totalitarian policy, as in they want to totally control
> your web experience (the fact that the same word is used to qualify
> dictatorships is not a coincidence): they make every effort so that if
> you dip a toe in them, you find yourself submerged before you know it.
>
> It is Google's choice, and Google's responsibility, and your choice and
> your responsibility if you decide to use Google totally.
>
> This choice should not direct the workings of a Libre Software projects
> that is not under the control of Google. The choice should even less
> direct the choices of other people working on the project.
>
> As was pointed out earlier, there are solutions. Even if Google hides
> it, there are ways of accessing their walled gardens with other
> applications. Even if there are not, you can decide to isolate your
> accounts. (If would probably be a good idea irregardless of FFmpeg,
> anyway.)
>
> So learn to use them, and do not demand other people to change their
> (good) habits so that you can keep your (bad) habits.
>


I understand your concerns, but Google has been pretty open with all its
productivity SaaS offerings.
So, while I would be against mandating the use of any Google products, I
can't see catering for Gmail users as a valid existential threat to any
open/libre project.

And some quick grepping reveals that 45% of the emails in the list for
2019-2020 were from 236 unique Gmail addresses.
That's an awful lot of people with bad habits to ignore.



> I would offer my help in doing so, but as I explained, I do not use
> Google, and therefore have no help to offer to better use it. But if you
> want my help in learning powerful command-line tools, you can have it.
> (And it would probably be a good investment of your time.)
>
>
I'm a command line veteran myself, with the same weapons of choice as you
(vim/zsh), but I still struggle with the ffmpeg workflow. I'd surely be
interested for any command line tools that would make it easier.

If you have the time to add a section to the documentation, I'm sure it
would be helpful for many people. And there's also the "tools" directory
for sharing any tools/scripts you created for ffmpeg development.

Best regards,
Manolis