[FFmpeg-devel] SWS cleanup / SPI Funding Suggestion

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le perjantaina 13. lokakuuta 2023, 22.19.34 EEST Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> But some goals would probably be to make sws
> * pleasent to work with
> * similar speed or faster
> * proper multithreading
> * proper full colorspace convertion not ignoring gamma, primaries, ...
> * clean / understandable modular design (maybe everything can be a "Filter"
> inside sws that get build into a chain)

It sounds very nice. But it also sounds very fuzzy and subjective. Unless you 
can put this in more objective terms such as would be expected of a statement 
of work, all the while not compromising the intent of the sponsorship, I would 
advise against using foundation funds.

But first...

> Proper payment (50k$ maybe) would be too much in relation to what SPI has
> ATM (150k$)

In my opinion, not "paying properly" is morally wrong, and sets a very bad 
example that it is acceptable not to pay developers properly.

Also it is really not that much money. I suppose that the yearly revenues are 
even only a fraction of that balance. If so, I would argue that it is not 
financially reasonable, doubly so when the overall world economy is in a rather 
iffy situation. If it were up to me, I would keep that money for infrastructure 
and other fees, purposeful hardware donations and travel.

Lastly using foundation funds to sponsor specific project may open a pandora 
box. What happens if more than one credible developer wants to take up the 
project? Or if other developers demand that their other reasonable clean-up 
projects be funded too? If the revenue and balance were much higher, you could 
hire all of them. But you can't, and then the simplest and safest way to avoid 
moral hazards is to hire nobody.

N.B.: I am not part of the GA, and I have neither the expertise and 
credibility nor the time and motivation to take up this project, so that's 
just my free advice.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/