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

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Hi,

Le 28 octobre 2023 21:01:57 GMT+03:00, Michael Niedermayer <michael at niedermayer.cc> a écrit :
>On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 07:21:03PM +0200, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>> Hi ronald
>> 
>> On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 12:43:15PM -0400, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
>> > Hi Thilo,
>> > 
>> > On Sat, Oct 28, 2023 at 11:31 AM Thilo Borgmann via ffmpeg-devel <
>> > ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org> wrote:
>> > 
>> > > What this is about, is to set up a way to properly spend the SPI money
>> > > aside
>> > > from travel & hw. Why we should not do it because some companies
>> > > beurocracy, I
>> > > cannot see.
>> > >
>> > 
>> > I sincerely don't think the above description is what Kieran meant when he
>> > talked about sustainability at Demuxed, which this thread seems to be a
>> > response to.
>> 
>> a quick reply here. I have not watched kierans presentation from demuxed yet.
>> So theres absolutly no chance anything i wrote till now can be a respone to
>> it.
>
>some more words about what the intend of this plan was, again not a respone
>to any presentation of anyone else
>
>Donations from people vs companies: both really.

I think Ronald's point is that you need to pick one, and clarify which it is, because as Ronald explained, it's unlikely that a *good* plan could address both (conversely a plan that tries to address both is probably poor and flawed).

In other words, if you want to cover both cases, you need two separate plans.

And unfortunately, I do believe that Ronald is correct in pointing out that big companies will want oversight in exchange for money. This is very much counter to the current project setup, which (depending whom you ask) is governed by the GA, or by Fabrice Bellard through his delegates.

This is not to say that these corporate wishes should or should not be accomodated. It is just an observation of those wishes.

>Peoples donations would only matter if we can increase awareness of people
>using FFmpeg. We have over a billion users but they dont know it.
>if each user gives us 1cent per year our sustainability is solved.
>So driving awareness alone would solve this already, even if only 0.1%
>of users would donate 10$ per year that would do.

How do you plan to gain visibility from those billion users? Call me pessimistic but this has been a known problem for 20+ years, and I have yet to glimpse a credible solution.

But again, if somebody has those incredibly cool feature projects in their head, lets hear them first, and then plan accordingly. Otherwise, we.are just debating hypotheticals and that will go nowhere.

>companies?
>will any company donate 500k$ per year into SPI? Most companies will be
>very hesitatnt before seeing us using funds effectively from SPI.
>Thats why we need to show this

Err no. Companies will want some control/oversight/whatever you call want to call it. They are also probably interested in different features that end users.

Mozilla didn't get their big corporate funding for just making cool stuff. It was compensation for provided services such as choice of default search engine. Similarly LF gets funding in exchange for influence in Linux kernel development and other LF activities.

But that sense, you did pick one side: users (and companies donating on behalf of user emloyees), as opposed to big corporations. Then let's hear what those cool features are *first*, and adjust the plan accordingly *next*.

>And yes many companies will prefer doing it over a company
>But some will favor a donation to 501(3) where everything is transparent.
>
>I cannot understand the hostility that kieran has towards this plan.
>And i find his toxicity towards it very troubbling
>
>thx
>
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