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

[Thilo Borgmann]

Am 27.10.23 um 03:28 schrieb Kieran Kunhya:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 12:41, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> 
>> Of course. FFmpeg has a donations account. So the money is already there
>> and
>> already used for the reimbursement requests. Whatever we spent it for
>> needs to
>> be decided by the community. Spending more money instead of just watch it
>> growing is a good thing. That this will lead to more "disaster" is an
>> assumption
>> without basis. Even if this does happen and fails, its still better than
>> not
>> having even tried.
>>
> 
> Reimbursement requests for clearly defined things like travel costs with
> receipts, or hardware that the project owns is in no way comparable to
> consulting work, contracts, statements of work etc. And the current swscale
> proposal is far from this too.

Yes, of course they are different. Most importantly sponsored development needs 
to be agreed upon beforehand. That does not imply sponsored work is not clearly 
defined. I miss your argument about why it can't be done in this.


>> Also, you just advertised FFmpeg and asked for more financial support in
>> your
>> talk at Demuxed [1] - so I figure your prefered way of doing that would be
>> to
>> channel money into some company without the community being involved?
>>
> 
> Actually if you watched the presentation, I said big companies need to
> support maintenance (not the same as bounties) of FFmpeg by hiring
> employees to work full time as they do with Linux Kernel maintainers. Or
> failing that they can donate to the community - but as you know well the
> numbers we have are not enough to hire full time maintainers.

I'm totally fine with you asking big companies to hire devs for FFmpeg 
maintenance. That does not relate to my question, though. Do I assume correctly 
that your prefered way of doing that would be to channel money into some company 
without the community being involved?


> Agreement via mailing list for money is a recipe for disaster. What we need
> are clear statements of work that are voted on by TC.

That's not the purpose of the TC. We of course need to have a good way of 
approving or disapproving proposals and of course we need these to be clearly 
defined. I again miss to see your argument why that shall not be possible on the 
ML - everyone on this list knows where your suspicion comes from but again, 
without even having tried, it's just your assumption and should IMHO not 
stopping us from trying to implement such a procedure.


> We can't even agree on patch reviews, throwing money into the mix is
> throwing gasoline into the fire.

Being in conflict about a patch is completely different to conflict about some 
feature we might want. And no, not everything is as controversial as SDR or gets 
controversial just because it would be sponsored. You think there would have 
been real and non-resolvable opposition against bringing multi-threading into 
ffmpeg.c? You assume a proposed sponsored AV2 decoder will raise such opposition?
However, since I agree with you that there will be different oppinions, why 
would you think that a e.g. a vote/committee or whatever we will choose could 
not resolve how we deal with these cases?


> And since you also advertised explicitly for FFlabs - what is your relation
>> to
>> FFlabs? I own 25% of that company and I am not aware of any relationship.
>> You
>> just did advertise FFlabs because... FFlabs exists? FFlabs is a company
>> co-owned
>> by some FFmpeg developers, it's not FFmpeg nor can it represent it or act
>> on its
>> behalf.
>>
> 
> I linked to the consulting page and also to FFlabs which as far as I know
> is the only company offering an SLA on FFmpeg.
> If others existed I would have included them.

Nothing wrong about bringing attention to ff.org/consulting or FFlabs.
My question is what your relationship with FFlabs is?


>> As soon as we pay developers via SPI it can become a good zero-trust
>> environment
>> for donators to offer tasks & money to FFmpeg and handle the money flow
>> via SPI.
>> The donators can be sure that their issues are handled properly in the
>> project
>> (on the ML) and do not flow away into some other sink and the developers
>> can be
>> sure to get their money from SPI because the offer is public and backed by
>> the
>> FFmpeg SPI account. Sounds like a quite trustworthy and most importantyl
>> transparent way to handle things and build up trust in potential donators
>> that
>> the money they spent actually end up with FFmpeg.
>>
> 
> Do you really think the way SPI funding is managed currently matches your
> description?

That's exactly the point, to find a procedure that works for sponsored work.


> Stefano approves by saying "Approved on my side, pending Michael's
> approval."

That won't change because SPI demands it. Done. We can change the names Stefano 
and Michael into whatever, but that's it.

 > This is not at all a community driven process where one person can veto
 > everything.

What needs to be setup, is a procedure to find FFmpeg's decision about it.
Who transports it to and approves it towards SPI is completely uninmportant 
because it cannot be done against the will of FFmpeg - and yes, SPI checks.
Also blocking by a single individual cannot be done already, doesn't even matter 
if it's Michael or Stefano.


>> I don't think developers should be paid via SPI for this reason.
>>
>> I think supporting FFmpeg developers via SPI fits perfectly into what we
>> have
>> SPI for in the first place - an independant entity that handles the
>> community
>> funds with absolute objectivity and no intrinsic interest whatsoever. In
>> contrast to any company, including (my own-ish) FFlabs.
>>
> 
> If there is disagreement (which will be inevitable) SPI will not step in.

Only if non-resolvable. If we setup a procedure, that is solved.


> Money is only going to make our current ML drama situation worse.

Circling again. I think everyone long enough on this list agrees with you that 
we have drama potential on almost everything here. However, CC & TC 
instanciation proved that we have a way of putting an end to the drama.

So why don't you want to give it a try at least?

-Thilo