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

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

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? 
Call a blocking MessageBox? Start the browser unsolicited?

In any case, you will only piss people off. And pissed off people are not known 
to give money. Rather they will look for another version of the affected app or 
another app to "fix" the "bug".

And anyhow, somebody would object to the TC, and I cannot believe that the TC 
would then allow that sort of thing to be committed.

But for the sake of the argument...

> Also dont ignore the effect of the controversy around this ;)

That works both ways, unless you believe that "there is no such thing as bad 
press".

> It would be on many news sites that XYZ displayed a notice
> that it used FFmpeg and asked for donations for sustainability.

Realistically, FFmpeg gets updated in reverse depencies application over 
periods of months, or even years. A few minor FFmpeg-based app letting this 
slip through would probably not be newsworthy. And it seems unlikely that 
major ones like Kodi, mpv, VLC, etc, would let this slip through in the first 
place.

> All these news articles are free amplification of the message ;)

That most probably will not happen, and if it does, it will most probably be 
in a bad way.

This idea is a non-starter IMO.

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