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

[Thilo Borgmann]

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 at 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