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

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Hi,

Le 27 octobre 2023 14:10:15 GMT+03:00, Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org> a écrit :
>> Le 26 octobre 2023 18:45:23 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael at niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>>> This is financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)
>>> ATM SPI has like 150k $, we do not activly seek donations, we do not currently
>>> use SPI money to fund any development. SPI money is ultimately controlled by
>>> the FFmpeg community and everything is transparent and public.
>> 
>>> 1. We should fund some FFmpeg development with SPI-FFmpeg money
>> 
>> Why should it be via SPI? What's the benefit of that hypothetical future additional funding going via SPI, as opposed to:
>
>obviously transparency and community control. None of which is given by the options you list.

Do you want transparency there? This is *not* about having open source code and the public code review. This is about people's work commitments and compensation. Martin and I are about the only people here whose taxable income is public information. It doesn't seem to me that people typically want that sort of information public.

And then that means more non-technical work for the unpaid *other* members of the community in managing the paid developers' work. This is also unlikely to ve welcome to most.

>> - via FFlabs or any other reputable OSS multimedia consulting company,
>> - a consortium of large companies, or
>> - directly to a salaried or freelance developer.
>
>Also, it is not that these shall cease to be done. Using SPI money is one more option.

Using SPI money would hypothetically be an option if there was enough money. Currently there is not.

>> That's the part that you'd need to clarify first. What relevant flashy cool development will attract those donations? Why should they be funded by donations rather than more traditional business transactions?
>
>Hen & egg.

What? Why do you need to start spending money before you can have ideas of cool projects? That makes zero sense to me.

>>> * If you have some flashy FFmpeg project you want to work on with a cost of
>>>   between 5-15k $ then propose it on the mailing list, make yourself ready for
>>>   some paperwork complexities and some public debate as thats the first time we
>>>   try this, there will be extra issues likely.
>> 
>> I don't think that code bounties count toward OSS "sustainability". It's condoning the so-called jig economy, which is the opposite, IMO.
>
>Code bounties sustain a/the developer(s) working on it and that way they stay active with the project.

No they don't. They make up a precarious insecure and unstable financial situation. That's the literal opposite of sustainability.

It's fine to take a bounty as a bit of extra income, or as an internship, but that is about it.